When you fire up an Aston Martin DBS Volante, a little digital message tickertapes across the dashboard display. “Power, Beauty, Soul,” it says. Which makes a nice change, because when I power up my own car I generally get a message saying “Service Due” or “Bulb Failure, Rear Light”. But that’s the difference, obviously, between a throbbing new Aston Martin soft-top and a traumatised old Volvo estate.
Other differences include the Aston Martin’s Monte Carlo price tag; its tear-inducing acceleration; and that the six-litre V12 engine emits, at start-up, a deep and pedigreed bark, whereas, when you twist the key in the old Volvo, the engine sounds like something trying to crawl out from under a pile of damp cardboard boxes.
True, the DBS Volante is worse than useless if you’re looking to take a two-seater sofa down to Bristol, while the Volvo absolutely eats up that kind of work. But that’s about the only comparative drawback I can think of.
So: power, beauty and soul — it’s not lying. But does it need to come right out and say so, in writing? It’s an Aston Martin, after all. It’s like the gimmick on new Jaguars, where a rim of red light around the gear selector pulses away just after you climb in, as if the car were possessed of a heartbeat. Surely a Jaguar should quicken the driver’s pulse of its own accord, and not by offering an ersatz pulse of its own.
Similarly, a miniature crisis of self-belief seems to be affecting Aston Martin these days, with the part of the car key now being played by a glossy lump of steel and sapphire, and officially referred to as the “Emotion Control Unit”. True, this object is weighty and rather fondle-able and approaches the condition of male jewellery. But, in short, it starts the car. So, “Emotion Control Unit”? Again you feel that you are being prodded to think about things that cars such as these once trusted themselves to make unignorable.
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Still, these are quibbles about what is, by any standards (other than those relating to the removal of sofas), a podium-topping sports car. Indeed, I’m going to put my head high above the parapet and say that if you buy only one new Aston Martin this Christmas, the DBS Volante should be it.
Yes, I can see the claims of those who say the Vantage V12 should be the Aston under everybody’s tree this year. I’ve driven one of those, too, and it was emotional. I also understand why a soft-top Aston, such as the Volante, is not the purist’s choice. (People who are serious about speed take a dim view of sacrificing rigidity and aerodynamics for the pleasure of hanging your hairstyle out the back window.) It’s certainly not an option that James Bond would consider. Under the Volante’s canvas, you are vulnerable to sniper fire, rocks that fall off Italian mountains and the collapsing girders of exploding warehouses in a way that you never are in the solidly lidded DBS. I can also vouch that it takes a certain amount of, shall we say, chutzpah to sit at traffic lights in an open-top Aston during a recession and in an era of broad ecological concern.
It would be an attitude worth working on, though, because the Volante is a masterpiece of fine-tuning, deft proportioning and fun — not to mention power, beauty and soul, as, rather irritatingly, it will tell you itself.
Aston Martin DBS Volante
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Price £175,681 Top speed 191 mph Acceleration 0-62 in 4.3 seconds Consumption 18.2 mpg Emissions 367 g/km Rating Supreme convertible that does what is says on the dash