Yahoo Autos 2025 Aston Martin DBX707 Still a Massive Joy to Drive
New 2025 Aston Martin DBX707 gets a new interior, including dash and center concole.
The 697-hp model is the sole model available right now, after the slow-selling DBX505 was canceled.
Pricing starts at $253,000.
Yes, the big news here is that the 2025 Aston Martin DBX707 gets an all-new interior.
That includes Aston Martin’s own infotainment system replacing the once-klunky Benz system from the days of Mercedes ownership (or was it a “partnership?”). A touchscreen with full capacitive single- and multi-finger gesture control replaces the much-whined-about Mercedes system with all-new Aston-only efficiency.
In front of the driver is a new 12.3-inch screen—1.5 inches larger than the DB12 and Vantage—that displays instrument readouts and driver information, while a second 10.25-inch display screen is perched in the center console for infotainment.
Below that info screen is a highly usable and all-new array of buttons and tiny levers that are likewise welcome replacements from DBXs previous. These include a fine raised nubbin of a shifter lever that you get used to almost immediately and that makes easy sense to use.
Other new switches control HVAC, drive modes, suspension, ESP, and even exhaust tone (which defaults to the quiet setting now so you don’t get bricks thrown at you by the neighbors when you start your car early in the morning).
All the above improvements sit in an all-new interior that can be overwhelming if you get the orange or green interior colors—which we recommend only if your album just dropped and you want to make a scene pulling up to the club. Luckily, Aston Martin offers more subdued, more livable, and daily drivable interiors, too.
There’s even a new steering wheel, door handles, and “elegant vertical air vents.” A new, optional, 1,600-watt, 23-speaker Bowers & Wilkins audio system tops it off. And if you don’t like what’s available in the showroom models, just ring up Q by Aston Martin for a fully bespoke interior of your own.
But all that news may distract from the most appealing thing about the DBX707—driving it.
Work on this generation of DBX got underway in 2016, and it came out in 2020, albeit with the less-appealing interior. The goal then, as you might expect, was to be the best in the class.
Granted, no carmaker starts with a goal of being “okay in class, sort of mid-pack, I guess.” But this one was a challenge. The class is what you might call, “Ultra-Super-Hi-Po-Luxury SUV.” That includes the mighty Lamborghini Urus Performante, Porsche Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid, AMG GLS 63, and Bentley Bentayga. It now also includes the Ferrari Pursangue, which wasn’t on the list in 2016.
The Urus, Cayenne, and Bentley share a lot of components, but all the abovementioned entries save the Ferrari are powered by 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8s, lead by the Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid’s 729-hp, 700-lb ft powertrain. The Purosangue’s V12 makes 715 hp and 528 lb-ft (and sounds darn good doing it).
But the DBX707 holds its own at third-in-class powertrain performance with 697 hp and 664 lb-ft of torque driving all four wheels through a nine-speed wet-clutch transmission. That’s 38 more peak hp than the Urus Performante, almost 100 more than the AMG GLS 63, and 155 more than the Bentayga. DBX tips the scales at a moderately beefy 4,940 pounds of DIN curb weight (SAE curb weight was not listed).
The higher-output Aston powertrain is so appealing that few were buying the DBX505 model with only 498 hp, so Aston just discontinued it.
Power outputs aside, using each manufacturer’s own published performance specs, the DBX leads them all, with a 0-60 mph time of 3.1 seconds, while it shares its 193-mph top speed with the Purosangue.
But more importantly, the DBX may have the most naturally sporty feel of them all behind the wheel, though they are almost all enjoyable to drive hard, especially the Ferrari.
“We wanted to achieve a bit of a blend of everything,” said DBX chief engineer Andy Tokley. ”We wanted to achieve the luxury of the Bentayga, but exceed the performance of the Porsche and Urus.
“Obviously, when we started designing the car, it was 2016 and the modern era of Urus wasn’t out, Bentayga was just coming into launch, and Porsche was on a previous generation. So it was a bit of an educated guessing game, or a forecasting of where we thought they may get to, and trying to engineer and project for that target.”
And did they exceed their targets?
“I think we wound up exactly where we were planning to wind up, which is the highest performance and the most fun-to-drive luxury SUV in the market.”
This was borne out on our drive. Normally, for a large SUV, you might expect the drive route to include some scenic straight-ahead freeways and maybe a few gently winding country roads, with a stop for a two-hour lunch where company professionals laugh at all your jokes and sound sincere doing it. But Aston just tossed us all into some very tight, very twisty, sometimes even slightly wet mountain roads and let us have at it.
It was very close to the same route Porsche had for us last year on the 911 S/T drive. It was here that the true appeal of the DBX707 was revealed.
As much as you pushed it through fast or tight corners, it ate them all up and was happy to do more. The feel of the car through a bend was far more natural than, say, the AMG equivalent, where body roll is verboten and steering response was schnell!
The DBX has been allowed to roll a little, two degrees of roll for each lateral g. And the steering felt far more natural than many of the competitors.
The following is chief engineer Tokley’s explanation of how some of that feel was achieved:
It’s a 48-volt motor with two very thick bars that run out to the suspension drop links that attach to the dampers to prevent the car from rolling. So when it sees the car rolling and it initially starts to detect that through your steering input before the roll happens, the motor winds in opposite directions and effectively props up the outside of the car to stop it rolling.
And the other benefit to that is that the front and rear (antiroll) motors don’t have to execute the same level of torque. So as you probably know, when you run a stiffer rear antiroll bar, it adjusts the balance of the car more from understeer to oversteer.
So what we can do is dynamically shift that throughout the different cornering phases. So on the entry phase, you keep the front stiff, the steering response is faster and more clean. And then once the car begins to load, then you start pulling, slowly, the roll distribution backwards. So in the mid-corner phase and corner exit phase, the car's rotating really nicely.
And then you couple that also with the drive torque split of the car. So we also start to run the drives torque split backwards as well to give you that authentic kind of rear wheel-drive come-out-of-the-corner yaw feeling.
And who doesn’t like that feeling?
This is not to say that competitors are not fun in corners. Lamborghini introduced the Urus on no less a storied track than Vallelunga outside of Rome, and it performed splendidly there. And I just had a Bentley Bentayga EWB (extended wheelbase) and loved every minute of that.
I haven’t been in a Cayenne in a long time but since it shares componentry with the Bentley and Lamborghini we can assume it has a similar feel. I’ve never warmed to Mercedes AMG’s approach to absolute control of all movements, however. I would say the Ferrari Purosangue is closest to the DBX in natural and progressive cornering feel.
But they’re almost all fun to drive.
So maybe you want to make your Ultra-Super-Hi-Po-Luxury SUV buying decision based on cost. The DBX707 starts at $253,000. My loaded electric green machine stickered at $350,500. Most examples in this class load up pretty easily in price. The Ferrari is $398,350, the Urus Performante $273,880, the Bentley Bentayga $205,925, the Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid $158,995, and the AMG GLS 63 a mere $150,650.
Pick one and go enjoy a practical, roomy SUV that also happens to grant world-class driving feel. And a new shifter knob.
Which would you choose, and why? Let us know in the comments below.
