Driving the Everyday Exotic That Is the 2025 Aston Martin DBX707
No one will know your drop-dead super-SUV is—gasp—as practical and comfortable as it is fast and pricey.
It’s easy to lust after exotic cars. They bring drama, arrest bystander attention, and thrill the senses with lusty noises and breakneck speed. Too often, though, their, uh, exoticism extends to the more mundane elements, in ways more bad than good. “Exotic” is a descriptor you want attached to the engine, looks, maybe even the price tag—it’s not something you really want in, say, a door handle or radio, the kinds of things you hope to use without frustration day in and day out.
Aston Martin’s DBX SUV is unabashedly exotic, with its long hood, drop-dead proportions, and grinning maw draped over a seriously athletic chassis and Mercedes-AMG-derived V-8 engine. Until now, though, that wow-inducing otherness has extended to its more functional bits, with frustrating door handles that required manually pressing in (and holding) the forward section to lever the rest of the handle out before you could pull it and release the door; flub the move, and the lever popped shut again. If you were holding something or carrying anything, using those handles took more thought than most people would like. Once inside the car, front-seat occupants faced an ancient Mercedes-sourced infotainment system that looked as old and raggedy as it functioned. And its control knob, since the screen wasn’t touch-operated(!), hogged center console space, leaving behind few or compromised places to stash modern life’s essentials, such as a phone or coffee. For 2025, that all changes.
Are we seriously initiating this review of a revised, 697-hp super-SUV by focusing on door handles, cubby space, and the infotainment user experience? Why yes, yes, we are. It might seem trivial, but they were really the only major complaints we could muster about the original DBX; consider them now handled—pun intended—and the Aston SUV’s greatness and exoticism are now free to shine brightly without any of the usual trade-offs of vehicles like this. Furthering that along, every 2025 DBX is now a 707-spec model; the lower-output 550 version is dead. Aston Martin says most buyers were springing for the mightier 707 anyway, so it’s merely following the market.
What Isn’t New
To recap, the DBX707 uses a modified version of Mercedes-AMG’s ubiquitous twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 engine, upgraded with Black Series–spec turbochargers and other changes to produce 697 hp and 664 lb-ft of torque—more than Mercedes allows this 4.0-liter to make in any of its homegrown products. Aston Martin also ensures the V-8 sounds different, too, trading the German applications’ crackly, higher-pitched staccato sneezing for a deeper huffing with more bass throughout the rev range. Pops and burbles on overrun and when decelerating are more randomized, too, than the seemingly prescribed trio of pops AMG tunes into its cars. The DBX also borrows AMG’s nine-speed wet-clutch automatic transmission but fits the powertrain into a chassis, body, and electrical architecture all its own.
There are three-chamber air springs at all four corners, supported by electronically adaptive dampers with separate rebound and compression valving that allows Aston’s engineers to tune wheel movement precisely and independently both up and down. A 48-volt electrical system powers huge-torque electric motors standing in for mechanical anti-roll bars, and Aston Martin uses these active bars to manipulate the DBX’s roll behavior in real time, at each end of the car.
The results are an SUV with serious moves and a seriously playful side; spin the heavily weighted, satisfying drive mode selector (the ignition button lives at the center of this knob) from the default GT mode, though Sport, and into Sport +, and the big Aston quickly stiffens the rear roll resistance earlier in a turn, shunts more engine torque to the rear axle sooner (up to 100 percent can be sent there), and keeps that torque there if—or really when—you start sliding the tail wide, especially if you’re in the stability control’s sport setting or it’s shut off completely. Aston notes that unlike in other all-wheel-drive performance SUVs, the focus isn’t on Nürburgring lap times or mimicking a sports car; the idea here is to have fun, and the active suspension’s performative manipulations of the body control really work to make the DBX707 feel loose and active on its tires. Countersteering through a drift also doesn’t trigger the computers to send torque to the front axle as in some competitors; only unwinding the wheel naturally signals that you’d like some front-end traction to help ease your way back into a straight trajectory.
When it comes time to cruise, the DBX rides shockingly well and reasonably quietly on its optional 23-inch wheels (22s are standard) and rubber-band-thin tires with the suspension in GT mode. But we knew all this already, having enjoyed the pre-update DBX707 massively at our 2023 Performance Vehicle of the Year competition.
So, What Is New Here?
Mechanically, the 2025 DBX707 is nearly identical to the 2024 model. There are some minor revisions to the steering, air springs, and dampers, but they’re in service of the same good-time vibes as before. Want to turn lap times anyway? That’s what the Sport mode is for; or, as Aston’s lead engineer for the DBX project tells us, it’s what Sport + but with the suspension set to Sport is for. In Sport +, you get the stiffest compression damping possible, but rebound damping isn’t dialed up as much, leading to a greater amplitude between it and the compression setting than you get in Sport or GT mode. This, along with the more aggressive stiffening of the rear end thanks to the active anti-roll bars, is what lends Sport + its hoon-tastic feel, which delivers more thrills even at lower speeds. The engine needed no work and received none. It’s still fantastic and should deliver the same 3.1-second rips to 60 mph we recorded in the pre-update DBX707.
Now the infotainment system no longer distracts users from exercising all the DBX707’s performance talent. Completely designed in-house, the new setup is far simpler than before, with a clear stack of menu shortcuts on the left side to music, navigation, phone, Apple CarPlay, vehicle settings, and a home menu. In each primary menu, users can swipe from the edges of the screen to enter a quick submenu for the audio source or the home menu. The extra layer is a bit fiddly and, given the shortcut buttons on the left side of the screen, seemingly redundant, but handling core, day-to-day functions is massively improved from before. Oh, and all these inputs are handled by touch—not via a recycled Mercedes knob.
The display itself could be a hair larger, since at 10.25 inches across and with its widescreen format, it comes off as smallish in a vehicle this size, but we had no problems stabbing on-screen buttons or finding our way through it, though some vehicle setting changes require finer fingertip control on account of their smaller on-screen buttons. Touch-sensitive pads on the steering wheel are very Mercedes-like, in more than just looks—they can be sluggish to respond to inputs at their edges, resulting in multiple swipes when attempting to change a setting on the new 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster. These are minor gripes, however, as most users will set up their DBXs once and never leave the cozy comfort of a few key menus.
And the touchy bits are joined by a waterfall of large physical buttons on the center console, with roller knobs for temperature, fan speed, and audio volume joining standard climate controls as well as buttons for traction control, exhaust volume, ride settings, vehicle height, lane keep assist, and parking sensors and cameras. They all work as neatly as they look, too. Aston Martin has also revised the air vent designs and added a useful tray (accessible from the sides via each footwell) underneath the center console for extra storage. New frameless door mirrors are another highlight; the entire mirror adjusts on its little perch, not only the glass part (so there isn’t ever a weird mismatch between the housing and the mirror), just like in the old days with classic wing mirrors. Oh, and those door handles! They now electronically extend themselves (and stay there) when you tap them with your finger or approach with the key in your pocket, making it easy to snatch one and pull the door open.
Eat Your Cake, Too
The changes for 2025 have erased the DBX’s exotic bits that got in the way of everyday life, while keeping those that make the Aston Martin stand out in a segment bursting with personalities such as the Bentley Bentayga and upper-level Porsche Cayennes and Mercedes-Benz G-Class models.
Further separating it from the blue-chip competition? For a machine with so much performance and drama, the newest DBX707 is surprisingly practical. The rear seat is still spacious, with the DBX’s longer wheelbase enabling a roomy cabin despite the super-short front and rear overhangs, and the new storage cubbies and the like up front are welcome. Aston Martin even fits buttons on the right wall of the cargo area for folding the rear seats down from back there, mirroring those controls with up/down buttons for the air suspension so you can adjust the DBX’s height while loading items. Hey, folks who pay a quarter of a million bucks or more for a super SUV still go to the grocery store—or, at least, we think they do.
The 2025 Aston Martin DBX707 is on sale now, with prices starting at $249,000–$253,000 after the $4,000 destination charge—that can easily swell by six figures with options. The Photon Lime green example driven here carries a $350,500 price tag that includes amusing and delightful extravagances such as a $500 umbrella that cleverly stows in the cargo area; a new-for-2025, Bowers & Wilkins audio system featuring 23 speakers that will set you back $12,300; a full $35,800 worth of carbon fiber-trim inside and out; and that paint job itself, which runs $13,500(!). Exotic? You bet. Door handles and a radio that won’t infuriate you after their something-different novelty wears off? Yep. Worth the money? Definitely.
A lifelong car enthusiast, I stumbled into this line of work essentially by accident after discovering a job posting for an intern position at Car and Driver while at college. My start may have been a compelling alternative to working in a University of Michigan dining hall, but a decade and a half later, here I am reviewing cars; judging our Car, Truck, and Performance Vehicle of the Year contests; and shaping MotorTrend’s daily coverage of the automotive industry.
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