Moments to savour

What Aston Martin has achieved with the DB12 is nothing short of revolutionary, chiselling the soft performance edges of its predecessors into a harder, more dynamic package. Aston says 80 percent of this car is a fresh proposition – everything from the smoother suspension to the faster gearbox, the stiffened chassis and the heightened grip levels. But the real game changer is the new 4.0-litre V8 engine – a miraculous unit that, incredibly, generates even more power and torque than the 5.2 V12 in the DB11, adding an extra 30 kW and 100 Nm to leave 500 kW and 800 Nm.

If you’re Lawrence Stroll – Aston Martin’s Executive Chairman and cameo star in Netflix’s fly-on-the-pitstop-wall series Drive to Survive – it simply has to. Full stop. No questions asked, or here’s the door. The Canadian businessman has made no bones about his desire to pitch the British marque closer to the boom-boom of Ferrari and Lamborghini than the ooh-aah of Rolls-Royce and Bentley – hence the bold super-tourer tagline.

Adding to the pressure, the DB12’s launch coincides with the nameplate’s 75th anniversary, a period that has seen the car evolve into a pop-culture icon, thanks in no small part to its lifelong relationship with the James Bond franchise.

Indeed, Never Say Never Again, GoldenEye and Casino Royale all filmed scenes in the grandiose surrounds of Monte-Carlo Casino, just an intrepid, 007-style zip-line away from our current vantage point.

Keen to bottle the morning’s special feeling, and even keener to avoid Monaco’s chaotic maze of streets, we head inland toward Route Napoléon, a scenic 325-kilometre driving paradise sandwiched between the ocean and the foothills of the Alps. Compared to some of its rowdier stablemates – the Vantage, DBS Ultimate Volante or genuinely demented Valkyrie – the front mid-engined DB line has traditionally been the refined gentleman of the pack, a luxurious, class-leading GT you could comfortably spend the whole weekend in without the merest hint of stress or bum- ache but, ultimately, one that could be called a sports car in the way Ghostbusters can be called a horror movie. All that ends now.

What Aston Martin has achieved with the DB12 is nothing short of revolutionary, chiselling the soft performance edges of its predecessors into a harder, more dynamic package. Aston says 80 percent of this car is a fresh proposition – everything from the smoother suspension to the faster gearbox, the stiffened chassis and the heightened grip levels. But the real game changer is the new 4.0-litre V8 engine – a miraculous unit that, incredibly, generates even more power and torque than the 5.2 V12 in the DB11, adding an extra 30 kW and 100 Nm to leave 500 kW and 800 Nm.

Aston could have easily gone down the more predictable, less-sensory electronic path to achieve these new figures but instead chose to employ some analogue sleight-of-hand, using larger turbos, modified camshafts and tweaked compression ratios. Somehow, it feels so right.

With Sport mode engaged, the car is an unadulterated performance bullet. The first barometer of any serious sports weapon is how well it devours corners, and in this respect the DB12 does not hold back at the buffet, greedily gobbling up challenging bends, remaining poised and agile throughout – thanks to an upgraded suspension system and a new electronic differential (linked to the car’s new electronic stability control), which goes from open to fully locked in milliseconds, providing delicious chunks of traction when required.

Exiting corners is an equally addictive drug, with the quick-shifting eight-speed automatic gearbox setting up passionate departures from the apex. You soon find yourself craving the arrival of s-bends with junkie-like fervour, each time throwing the DB12 in with more gusto than your ability probably deserves.

As a driving proposition, Route Napoléon may lack long, pace-building straights but the DB12 pays this no mind. Floor the accelerator, and it accrues speed at a pulse-raising rate. The official figure quotes zero to 100 kilometres per hour in 3.5 seconds but honestly, it feels even faster behind the wheel. Keep your foot pressed and the DB12 continues to pile on more tempo, and then more, and then more, in what feels like nanoseconds, to the point where you wish you were on a race track, not narrow, pockmarked two-lane mountain roads.

We also ponder probing the car’s tastier outer limits in Sport Plus mode until, in a cruel meteorological jibe at Aston’s British heritage, intense rain showers suddenly descend, rendering the surface too slippery for lairy antics.

As a result, a portion of our afternoon session is spent floating dreamily around in the more leisurely GT mode. For all chairman Stroll’s claims of having Ferrari and Lamborghini in his crosshairs, the DB12 simply cannot abandon its roots as a comfortable cruiser – this car is, after all, being trumpeted as a super tourer, not just in massive letters outside a landmark Monaco hotel but in every piece of Aston’s global PR literature. As such, on all but the most rutted French countryside tracks, the refined suspension, in conjunction with bespoke, noise-cancelling Michelin Pilot 5S tyres, helps preserve the DB line’s signature grand-tourer manners.

Inside, no luxury stone has been unturned either, keeping Aston – bar the odd champagne fridge here and there – in the same ultra-premium conversation as Rolls-Royce and Bentley. This means exquisite quilting pattern seats, handstitched Bridge of Weir hides, some very touchy-feely switchgear, a thunderous 15-speaker Bowers & Wilkins audio system and, most significantly, an all-new in-house infotainment system that represents a major upgrade from previous set-ups even the chairman publicly admitted were horrible things, deserving of no place in the high-end motoring boutique that is an Aston DB.

By the time the Mediterranean Sea and Monaco’s superyacht-jammed Port Hercule loom into view beyond the car’s elongated bonnet, it’s clear Aston has pulled off a particularly brave and difficult trick – creating a radical new identity for its most iconic model while walking the most delicate of tightropes between refinement and performance. Where the DB badge goes from here is another question – one step either way could be fatal. For now, though, let’s just savour the moment.

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