The New DB12: An Aston Martin with a bit of Ferrari? | Henry Catchpole - The Driver’s Seat

foreign [Music] this is the latest in Aston Martin's famous DB bloodline the new db12 I want to talk about the rear tires for a start this is a three two five section rear tire that's enormous that is super car wide then there's the fact that this is Michelin Pilot Sport 5S the first OEM application of that tire and finally these three little letters down here AML that tells you that this is a bespoke tire designed in collaboration with Michelin specifically for the db12 even the valkyrie didn't

get that and I think this rear tire tells you an awful lot about just how serious Aston is about this new car but before we go any further look at the view [Music] [Music] the new 185 000 pound or 245 000 db12 is fairly obviously the successor to the db11 but as that rear tire hints Aston is adamant that this is much more than just some Botox and a bum lift the car is 80 new with a chassis that's seven percent stiffer and although there is no V12 option this time the Mercedes Source V8 was alwa

ys the better option in the 11 and the four liter engine has been given larger diameter turbos and modified cam profiles resulting in a walking 6 171 brake horsepower and 500 torque Aston Martin says that this is the first in a line of new core cars that will better reflect a company that has a Formula One team as such they're claiming that this new db12 is not just a grand turo but the world's first super tourer interesting I mean just adding super to something well it comes with quite a lot of

pressure could it take away from the turret or something you know a bowl is just a bowl until you add super to it and it becomes one of the largest sporting events in the world and Mario well he's just a plumber but well he's just a man until he takes his glasses off isn't he super somehow brings with it more complex connotations than Grand super doesn't just mean bigger or better it takes things to a whole new realm so is this less rounded less comfortable less of a tourer now that it's an st

rather than a GT well the good news is no it's not less of a tour actually we've got lots of modes in here so we've got individual we've now got wet as well which is important because it allows the sort of the normal GT mode to be well that bit more sporty but I was afraid that I might give it too much Edge but not at all it's definitely still a nicely riding comfortable long distance Carvers so today the plan is to put some serious miles under its tread blocks on the famous root Napoleon and it

's fabulous varied on attributaries the overriding impression when I first got into this it's actually of what a smooth car it is and I kind of how light it feels it's a bit like one of those cakes or puddings that looks like it could be really rich and dense and heavy and then you put in your mouth and it's light as a feather numbers then Aston claims a dry weight of 6 5 kilos or just over 3 700 pounds which is distributed 48.52 front to rear there's no doubting that this is a big car when you

look at those new mirrors and you certainly see the extra 22 millimeters at the rear but for all that this feels big when you first get into it and look at that huge Bonnet out there and those arches as soon as you start driving it does that wonderful thing of shrinking around you as ever a lot of that I think is down to the accuracy of the steering good steering generally makes a car feel smaller as far as I'm concerned it's got a steering ratio of 13.09 to 1 which is quicker than a hurricane T

echnica not quite as quick as a Ferrari f8 which is down to about 11.9 but quick nonetheless they've talked a lot about feel particularly around the straight ahead I wouldn't necessarily say it's it's feel in terms of sort of the tactility of the tire and the surface beneath it but it's certainly gives you a great sense of connection and with that you increased Integrity to the ride I suppose that's what makes the whole car just feel well underneath you suspension is familiar double wishbones at

the front and a multi-link set up at the rear with an anti-roll bar on each axle the front tires by the way are also wide 275 35 zr21s but there is never any sense that comfort so this is certainly still a tourer definitely in GT mode even in sport mode I think it is still comfortable enough and that's down to these new Bilstein DTX dampers we have 40 greater sort of bandwidth and what they're able to cope with as such you can also feel the the way it steps up when you go from mode to mode you

can also feel the way it changes with the edif because this is the first DB car to get an Edith and it's definitely made a real difference as well as being 29 more powerful than the old db11 this also has a 13 shorter final drive so it's kept the same gear ratio spacing but it's a different gearbox and a shorter final drive so it's definitely more accelerative [Applause] expected in the figures too with a naught to 60 mile an hour a time of 3.5 seconds shaving half a second off the old V8 db11s

figure and while we're on the subject of the gearbox the significant change is that the paddles now move with the wheel rather than remaining fixed I think that's a slight shame but I realize plenty will think differently anyway they're certainly not the biggest change to the interior we've stopped here because just over there is grass which if you read Patrick suskin's excellent novel you might know as the perfume capital of the world but before that it was known for its tanneries which brings

us obviously to the leather in here how is that for a tenuous link for you but the interior of this car really is quite important so I think it was important to have a pause to really take it in obviously the last car well perhaps wasn't quite up to stuff in terms of its technology and I feel like this is really taken sort of two leaps I think in some ways it sort of played into its hands because you might think the next step would be to go all touch screen but now I feel people are coming back

from that and combining a touchscreen again with more tactile things because that's what people have been asking for and this well does it exceptionally well this rotary switch here for changing the modes and these lovely barrels here for temperature volume and the fan even the little switch here which is a bit like the one you find in a golf or a Porsche for example just covered in leather they are all so tactile they're so tactile that they they make you want to just sort of fiddle with them a

s you go along it's a bit like having the bezel on a watch you just want to sort of sit there and fidget with it Aston Martin has also designed all the sort of the electrical architecture behind this so it has its own scripts and fonts and all that sort of thing there have been a few little glitches in this car they did say that it's not quite the final iteration yet but fundamentally it all works well we've got Apple carplay screen down there rather than up there keeps it all nice and clean her

e does mean you look down a little bit but fundamentally it is a huge leap forward from before still the odd Mercedes bit here and there but I I like this new wheel as well with the smaller airbag and of course the paddle behind there overall well a bit of a tactile Triumph I think now if you like your immediately tactile form then why not think about joining the Haggerty Drivers Club because you'll get a magazine with some lovely Paper Stock to enjoy whilst your eyes flipped over the words and

pictures the driver's Club also brings with it roadside assistance and access to haggerty's online valuation tool still appealing though now for our next piece of road well that'll be familiar to anyone that knows the number plates bmt214a [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is the road that features at the beginning of GoldenEye when Pierce Brosnan is 007 in his Aston Martin DB5 takes on on our top in her Ferrari 355 GTS it's a spectacular Road the fact that the Aston was against a Ferrari is reall

y interesting and pertinent because since 2022 the boss of Aston Martin has been somebody called Amadeo Felisa who used to be the boss but Ferrari and he has brought in various people from Ferrari to help tune this car Can You Feel the effect of that I think you can actually yes this has a real composure to it and it seems to Pivot much more around the center of the car there is an agility here a balance and an edge when you turn into Corners that lovely sense of it carving through corners which

you get in a Ferrari so say it's just dialed back a little bit so it's not exactly the same but you can tell as that sort of a little bit of Ferrari DNA that bit of know-how in there this is a narrow road pretty big drops severe consequences when you get into this car initially see sort of how big it is I don't think you would imagine drive it like this particularly if you're driven a db11 before the nose on this is so much better it turns in rear follows it feels like it has a much shorter whe

elbase I love the fact as well so when you go up through the modes you notice that edif and the way that the car just gets more agility on turn in some of that will be from the dampers but it's definitely from the diff as well the other nice thing is that for all these cars huge power and torque there is a linearity to the delivery that means it's really easily Deployable the response from the throttle as well it's phenomenally good it's not in any way feel lazy and it retains that lovely smooth

ness through changes in direction as you push it pushing it to the very limits of those huge tires certainly takes some doing but go beyond the limit with the ESP a new nine stage traction control turned completely off and the db12 still hangs together and retains its surprising sense of feedback and control something I would perhaps like a little bit more of is is sound because I know this engine can sound really kind of dirty I suppose that's the fact that it isn't an out and out Supercar or s

ports car sounds good but just in sports plus it would be nice if perhaps it was a bit more [Music] of course it does help if you've got the odd Rock Tunnel to amplify it you know what I don't think on a top would have known Which Way Pond went if he was in this after a couple more runs through the spectacular Rock arches with the sky turning pink and the light fading there was really only one place we were ever going to head to finish the day in the db12 I thought it was appropriate that we sho

uld finish overlooking Monaco not because that's where JB finished his journey in Goldeneye but because DB retired down there David Brown sir David Brown the man that gave his initials to this famous lineage in fact he was down there when he gave his Blessing to Aston Martin to reinstate the DB line with the db7 and what of the db12 does it fit in that bloodline yes yes it does it's not say revolutionary car it's not doing anything particularly new take the Aesthetics for example the design lang

uage we've sort of seen it before really it's the same thing of a db11 with a DBS perhaps but the end result very attractive indeed and the Mechanicals there's nothing revolutionary in terms of The Wider Automotive Spectrum in there things like the edif new to the DB range but not new overall but the mechanical ingredients that they've taken and the way that they've honed them with this new team behind them have made something really rather good is it a whole new category of car this super toure

r really to be honest but it is a very good DB and all that that stands for that's more than enough [Music] [Music]