Related Forbes Article:
www.forbes.com/sites/kbrauer/...
I’m standing in front of this gorgeously stunning Aston Martin DB12 Volante, and if you’re wondering what Volante means, I know I did, I looked it up. It’s Italian for "flying" but in Aston Martin speak it stands for "convertible" and I think looking at this convertible you could say it’s gorgeous. It looks like a million bucks, but thankfully it doesn’t cost that much. It only costs about a quarter-million dollars. Starting price is $265,000, but this one, the way it’s equipped, is $331,000.
If you’re wondering, how do you add $65,000 to the base price of this car? Well, if you click the carbon ceramic brakes option you’re going to add $14,500. If you click the Q Color silver exterior paint, it’s gorgeous, that’s $11,900. And if you want the Monotone Inspiration interior leather, that’s $10,000. And if you want the Q Special interior color for your leather, that’s $7100==. That's right, $17,100 in just interior color options.
We haven’t even gotten into the gloss black lower body treatment that’s $3100, or the "Contemporary" color of the carpet that’s $2300. So clearly Aston Martin is happy to let you personalize this car, and they’ve got this Q Section. It's kind of like a James Bond thing, but it’s their customized/personalized section of the company called Q and they will let you personalize these cars to your heart's desire, and your bank accounts misery. For instance, one of the coolest elements on this car are the tail lights. They’ve got this great shape to them and on this particular car they're smoked. I think they’re really cool, and that’s good because they’re $1400.
But let's be honest, do any of these prices really matter? No, not for the target customer that Aston Martin has in mind for these DB12s. These Volantes are just starting to hit dealerships right now, and people are anxiously awaiting them. We’ve driven the car. We can tell you this car is worth anxiously waiting for.
The performance pedigree for this car is quite impressive. It’s got a 4.0-liter twin turbocharged V8 that some of you may know is largely borrowed from the Mercedes-Benz AMG division. In this car it makes 671 hp and 590 pound feet of torque. And it’s got these great settings for Sport and Sport+ in which case you start to up the exhaust note and it becomes quite a roar when you’re on the throttle. All that roaring thunder goes through an 8-speed transmission to the rear wheels. What you end up with is a 0 to 60 time of about 3 and a half seconds and a quarter mile in the low 11 second range. It can also go to a top speed of 202 mph.
And speaking of tops, this car has a four-layer soft top that when it’s up, it creates a very placid environment inside that very luxurious interior. You leave the car in Gran Turismo, or GT, mode, and it’s very easy to assume it’s just a pure luxury car. In fact Aston Martin calls this a Super Tourer because it’s designed to go long a distance in pure comfort. However, when you put it in one of the Sport or Sport+ modes, it does change its nature quite substantially. And that’s impressive because for a long time these driving modes had minimal impact on how these cars behaved, but thankfully in the last 5 or 10 years the level of technology inside the suspension, the transmission, the steering response, they can all be modified to such a degree that you can really get a dual personality vehicle like this one. Massive performance when it’s in Sport or Sport+, massive luxury and refinement when it’s in Gran Turismo mode.
Where I think this car improved the most from the last generation DB11 is the interior quality, which has been turned up up notch. When they first delivered this car and I sat in it I couldn’t stop myself from just running my hands over all the great materials that are inside. The wood, the leather, the textured control knobs. Everything looks great and feels great. I also like that it has dedicated switchgear that feels really good and lets you change climate control settings without diving into the touchscreen and having to go through multiple menus. The touchscreen itself is extremely well integrated with the rest of the interior design, which is good because you don’t want a piece of technology overwhelming what is an otherwise classic interior in a classic kind of old school, old world nameplate like Aston Martin.
Sure, you can find cars with more performance than this one offers, and you can go to super luxury brands like Bentley or Rolls-Royce and get approximately the same level of interior material quality and premium treatment. But find both of those in one brand and one model? The Aston Martin DB12 Volante is probably your best bet if you’re trying to marry performance and super luxury in a single vehicle.