Aston DBS Superleggera Volante breaks cover

You want wind-in-the-hair thrills? 725hp should see to that!

Now this is more like it. Despite Aston’s claims about the DBS Superleggera, and its undeniable talents, the car is clearly more of a GT than some of its immediate rivals. Yes, you know, that one. Great car though it is, the Aston flagship isn’t a pants-on-fire supercar.

All the more reason, then, to lop the roof off and make a Volante of the DBS. There’s of course history with the badge, with the previous V12 car spawning a convertible and third-party coachbuilders working their magic on the six-cylinder original. Moreover, roof down gives those on board better access to the V12 soundtrack, and the additional weight of a folding roof (albeit fabric, rather than metal) is arguably of less significance here when the coupe is already 1,700kg dry. And it has 664lb ft… Bring all that together with the DBS’s wilfully mature gait and the Volante makes a great deal of sense – should be rather nice.

These spy pics show the car’s fabric roof for the first time, which looks nicely integrated with the car’s broad haunches and aggressive rear deck. Handily the roads around the Nurburgring have provided typically grim conditions to test just how waterproof the canvas is, too.

Otherwise it’s as you were for the hard-top DBS, the car here sporting minimal disguise – it’s hard to imagine any qualms about that, given the handsome looks of the original car. Note the same exhaust, diffuser and intake arrangements as the hard-top, though it appears this Volante sports a unique set of alloy wheels.

There are no surprises, put simply, in the conversion from coupe to Volante, and why would there be? Much of the architecture work will have been done for the drop-top DB11, and presumably the design brief was ‘alter this really good looking car as little as possible’. Job jobbed, by the looks of it. Given Aston’s seemingly insatiable push for new model launches at present, we’d expect the DBS Superleggera Volante to be revealed and launched before 2019 is done with. Presumably somewhere hot and sunny, of course…

[Images: S. Baldauf/S.B.Medien]

 

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