Official pictures show prototype testing off-road as Gaydon prepares for 2019 launch
So the DBX will be called the DBX. Not the revelation of the century, we’ll grant you – but given the rancour Aston’s first SUV is likely to provoke in some corners, you can forgive it for sticking with the name we’ve grown accustomed to. The car itself is going to take longer to sink in. Like the Cayenne and the Bentayga and the Cullinan and the Urus and the Stelvio and every other SUV heralding from a prestige or sporting brand, there will be a period of hand wringing and forehead slapping before the DBX is eventually thought of as nothing more than business as usual.
The continuing health of Aston Martin as a business is, of course, what’s underwriting the whole venture. Ask anyone on either side of the Gaydon fence and they will tell you with great confidence that the DBX will romp from range oddity to best-selling model quicker than you can say ‘Varekai’. It is no coincidence that the 2019 model is the first to break new ground in the manufacturer’s famed Second Century plan (everything preceding it qualifying as a replacement for an existing model rather than new metal). The DBX is Aston at its most hard-headed.
For that reason it will have to be hard hearted about the whole thing, too. Much of its recent handiwork – the Vantage, the DB11 AMR, the DBS Superleggera – has been met with mostly gushing, effusive praise. The DBX will probably not enjoy the same reception. The latest pictures of it testing reveal a conventional-looking five-door SUV with Aston’s signature nose grafted on. Not unpleasant perhaps, but not disarmingly pretty either – or halfway as bold as Gaydon might have been had it not had one eye on fixed on sales volume.
Still, ambition can be measured in more ways than one. Lest we forget, Aston has built an entirely new factory to bring the DBX to life (one constructed in Britain, too) and the car sits on much the same platform that will eventually be used to underpin the forthcoming Lagonda – a saloon that promises to be forward-thinking in all the ways that the firm’s first SUV is arguably not.
Rest assured as well that the DBX will also have been made to go and sound like an Aston should. It is pictured on a Welsh rally stage because Gaydon wants to remind us that it is plumbing in the same go-anywhere bandwidth that its rivals have made great fuss of in recent years. But the SUV is also said to be the first Aston to go through a new dedicated test programme – one specifically designed to ensure that it reproduces the kind of dynamic on-road performance that permeates through its current sports car lineup.
It is not expected to have a hybrid powertrain holding it back either (not initially at any rate). Instead the DBX will start out with Mercedes-AMG’s 4.0-litre V8 – always a reason to be cheerful. As is the continued involvement of Mr M. Becker, Aston’s formerly-of-Hethel chief engineer; the man keeping the prototype out of the undergrowth. Indeed, it is his presence at Gaydon that has us wondering what manner of SUV might yet exit the gates at St Athan. Should he and the rest of the team happen upon the same mix of balance, power, high-sidedness and high silliness that makes the Range Rover Sport SVRsuch a hoot to drive, the sky may yet be the limit for the DBX. Aston, for one, is virtually banking on it.
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