2024 Aston Martin DB12 Volante First Drive: Make Up Your Mind, Aston

The new drop-top version of Aston Martin’s flagship DB12 is stupendous: Fast, loud, agile, and so beautiful it will make your soul ache. It is, in every sense of the overused word, an awesome car.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can tell you the one thing that’s arguably wrong with it.

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Britain Targets Italy

What’s “wrong” with the 2024 Aston Martin DB12 Volante may well stem from a shift in Aston Martin’s direction. The company no longer wishes to be seen as a competitor for Germanic Brits Rolls-Royce and Bentley; instead, it has set its sights southeast to Italy. New targets acquired: the supercars of Ferrari and Lamborghini. This seems to explain the biggest potential problem with the DB12 Volante, which is its rock-hard ride.

Now, one of the things that makes the DB12 so stupendously awesome is that it puts that rock-hard ride to excellent use. The purpose of a stiff suspension is to keep the tires firmly on the ground so they don’t lose traction, and holy hell does the new DB12 Volante do that.

We can tell a lot about a car by where the manufacturer takes us to drive it. If the press preview is on the arrow-straight roads of Miami, you can bet the suspension sucks. If it’s in Phoenix, where there are still a couple of curves left over from World War II, it’s not much better.

Aston had us pick up the DB12 in Santa Monica, California, and directed us to go west on Pacific Coast Highway, then turn up into the hills above Malibu, where some of the best twisty roads in the country are there to be mastered. “You know the roads,” we were told. “Go where you want. Be back in three hours and try not to bend up the cars.” Point being: Any PR pro worth the salt in their own tears only turns car critics like us loose on roads like that if they know their car is going to perform.

And perform the DB12 Volante did. With 671 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque on tap from the 4.0-liter, twin-turbo V-8—basically the same mill found in the DBX 707—your choice of gear in the ZF eight-speed automatic is irrelevant. There is no sweet spot, no noticeable turbo lag; there is only power, raw and brutish, the force-times-distance analog to freshly killed red meat.

We chose to use the paddle shifters only because accessing the upper rev band releases an almighty bellow that is a wonder to experience. Praise be to the chorus of trombones and tubas apparently hidden away in the DB12’s back bumper—and when do those guys and gals take a breath?

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Stealth Speeding in the Aston Martin DB12 Volante

That’s not to say the transmission’s Sport program isn’t good enough. (Though if Aston is serious about this Lambo/Ferrari thing, it should think about a twin-clutch transmission. Full-throttle shifts from the ZF eight-speed automatic are harsh.) Like all good transmissions, it does not downshift until the accelerator pedal moves at least some distance from the top of its travel, and doing so unleashes speed that builds quickly into license-losing (and, on Malibu’s curvy roads, Aston- and life-losing) range. You can make remarkably quick progress with the accelerator merely cracked and the engine loafing just above idle.

It is during this speeding, be it stealthy or bellowy, that you appreciate the benefits of that solid-riding suspension. As the Aston PR rep said, we know these roads, and we know where to find the bumpy curves that will try to loosen a car’s grip on the pavement and divert it from its intended path. Not in the DB12. When it sets its mind to keep its tires on the ground, nothing short of God driving a Liebherr crane could reduce those contact patches.

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But Wait, There’s More?

But here’s The Thing: We observed this classically good racing behavior even before we engaged the 2024 Aston Martin DB12 Volante’s Sport mode. In its softest setting, labelled GT, this Aston will still hand most performance cars their own rear diffusers on a 24-karat-gold platter. Turning the drive-mode dial to Sport merely increases the speed necessary to break the tires loose, from suicidal to homicidal. Sport Plus ups that further to genocidal.

This is not necessarily a bad thing—it bodes well for the DB12 Volante’s performance on a track, though you would think the coupe is better suited to that environment—but while the chassis setup and engine power are that of a supercar, the rest of the convertible is a grand tourer.

Well, everything except the brakes, which have solid bite and a firm feel like classic non-assisted performance binders. Don’t change that, Aston, whatever you do. But take, say, the steering, which is delightful. The DB12 tracks as straight as the proverbial arrow, and yet it takes inputs perfectly, responding instantly but not suddenly. The DB12 runs through the curves as if by telepathy, and as wide as the car is, it feels tidy and easy to place. This is not the hyper-responsive steering of a supercar; it’s the balanced, no-compromise steering of a magnificent GT.

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Traditional Luxury and New Infotainment

Same for the interior. No one does elegance like the Brits, and the DB12 is an inebriating mix of thick-cut leather and open-pore wood. The control layout needs no improvement: In an age where some automakers use too many buttons and others don’t use enough, Aston strikes a good balance, particularly for the important stuff. To wit: There are multiple ways to fine-tune the driving experience, with hard buttons for the three-mode suspension and three-mode exhaust. All that said, we could take a pass on the Porsche-style toggle shifter in the center console: It’s possible, and not too difficult, for an errant passenger to knock the transmission into neutral.

This is as good a time as any to mention one of Aston’s proudest achievements: its first in-house-designed infotainment system. It’s an improvement over the Mercedes-based systems used in other Aston Martins, in the same sense that being served a caramel sundae is an improvement over being hit in the head with a potted plant. Aston was still debugging the system on the pre-production cars we drove, but for the most part it looked good, with crisp graphics and an excellent camera display, though some of the icons were small and difficult to press while on the (very rapid) move, even for folks with dainty fingers. Sound from the 11-speaker Bower & Wilkins stereo was as beautiful as the DB12 itself, with deep bass and crisp treble, though we did wish for a little more volume with the top down.

Speaking of which, we were amazed by how quiet the 2024 Aston Martin DB12 Volante is with the top up. Certainly, the double-pane glass helps, but the roof is so thick it’s difficult to believe it’s made of fabric rather than metal. Also, we were amazed anyone would ever want to put the top up in this car. Such people don’t deserve a DB12 Volante! (And no, we don’t care if it’s winter. The car has a heater, you lightweight. Rain? Drive fast enough and water will never make it into the car. Hmmm, maybe we’re starting to get this hardcore thing, after all.)

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What Does the DB12 Volante Want to Be?

Looks, décor, steering, brakes, luxury, and the whole top-down experience: The Aston Martin DB12 Volante could be the perfect grand tourer … except for the ride.

Don’t get us wrong; we don’t want it to float like a 1976 Buick. But Aston could re-tune the car so its existing GT mode is the Sport Plus mode, and you’d still have one hell of a scorcher. The hard-on-the-pavement persona is better suited to the smaller, lighter Vantage—not that the DB12 demonstrates any sign it’s aware of its own size and weight, mind you. Still, we imagine most people buy the bigger and more-expensive DB12 for maximum comfort and opulence, not track performance.

It’s easy to understand why Aston Martin wants to distance itself from Rolls-Royce—the latter’s idea of performance is a living room on stiff shocks—but what’s wrong with the way Bentley does things? Bentley builds what an earlier age would call the gentleman’s sports car: Luxury and speed with an undertone of civility. That is the type of automobile the DB12 Volante feels like it should be, or easily could be.

Still, We Love You Just the Way You Are

Most Lamborghinis and Ferraris, and McLarens for that matter, deliver raw speed at the expense of all else. The high-end Lambo Huracáns feel like they run on a mixture of gasoline and caffeine, with the turbochargers blowing toots of cocaine into the intake, while the Ferrari 812 and McLaren 765LT feel light-weighted to the point of fragility (arguably true in the case of McLaren). Sure, Aston Martin could build a car like that, but snuggle into the DB12’s soft leather seats and it’s obvious the thing’s heart isn’t quite in it. (Also, the current crop of Ferraris don’t ride quite this hard.)

Regardless, yes, the new DB12 Volante is an awesome vehicle and one that truly inspires awe in every way possible. Fifty years from now, you will see it in car museums, and deservedly so. Still, we imagine making the car less hardcore would only improve it for most of the real people who ever drive it. A little more compliance could make the drop-top DB12 the star of the stable, an opulent supercar that any self-respecting HNWI would want to drive every day—and certainly worth leaving the 812 and the Huracán at home.