The Aston Martin DBX707 Is an SUV-Shaped Supercar

The monochrome orange glow of street lights fills the cabin as my lover and I wait to enter the West Seattle bridge. When the light turns green, I gently pull my hand from hers and grip the leather-wrapped wheel tightly. Aimed at the onramp with the throttle matted, the 4.0-liter V-8’s baritone voice soars, filling the Aston’s cockpit until it’s rudely interrupted by the staccato bark of a violent upshift at 7,000 rpm. In three seconds, we’re at merging speed. Three more seconds and the speedo reads triple digits. 

In a blink, we’re at our exit. The six-piston calipers bite hard into the 16.5-inch carbon ceramic rotors as my passenger makes a little squeak of a giggle and scrambles for the leather grab handle, and I pitch the Aston at the apex of the off-ramp, tires thumping the Bott’s Dots like curbing. A short jaunt through the sleeping city, and we’re home, and not a moment too soon. My beautiful passenger looks over at me with anticipation.

It’s time for us to unload all the groceries from Costco.

Every high-end supercar manufacturer who swore they’d never make an SUV now makes an SUV, so the DBX was no real surprise. It’s even less surprising that in the four years since its debut, it’s become Aston’s best-seller, outselling every other model combined. That success has not been for a lack of competition, as we live in the best era in human history to be an ungodly wealthy SUV shopper: Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and Audi will all sell you a roughly $200,000 SUV that hits 60 in the neighborhood of three seconds. 

The DBX had the title of “most beautiful” locked down the minute it was introduced. Its front end is stereotypically Aston Martin and defined by its trademark mustache grille, but the rear—with its flared haunches flowing into a wagon-like C-pillar, all tied together with Aston’s signature heckblende—is one of the most beautiful of any SUV sold, ever. Its silhouette in profile is more shooting brake than sport utility. Aston knows how to build a car with sex appeal, and its first stab at an SUV is no different. 

Still, what the original DBX had in beauty it lacked in speed, with a doddering four-second sprint to 60. That’s a whole second slower than its competitors. Yawn-inducing. The solution to closing the acceleration gap was for Aston to rework the AMG-sourced 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 at the heart of the DBX.

New turbos and a healthy tune add 155 horsepower, for 697 total, and push torque to an eye-watering 664 pound-feet. Bigger brakes, a wet-clutch nine-speed automatic to replace the torque converter one, and chassis tuning turn the DBX into the DBX707. Now, it’s the most beautiful and fastest gas-powered SUV that money can buy. Just bring a lot of it: my test vehicle rang up at $266,408.

The price made sense once I got behind the wheel, because the DBX707 truly is a supercar in corners. It weighs a staggering 4,950 pounds, but I’d never suspect it. Steering response is Walther-accurate, quick (14.4:1), and perfectly linear. After you take aim, an electronic center transfer case and computerized limited-slip differential direct power, while a 48-volt active roll-mitigation system and adjustable three-chambered air suspension ensure that torque completes its journey to the pavement. 

Chassis tuning this SUV must have required more computing power than the Space Shuttle program had access to, but it was worth it. The processors work perfectly in concert with one another, because at no point did I ever notice them churning. Lap times for SUVs always seem a little pointless—what soccer mom has time for Thunderhill between practices?—but if I owned this, I’d actually want to track it. It feels more direct than half of the sports cars on the market. When Mrs. Bond has kids, she won’t even miss the Vantage.

For $7,800, Aston Martin will cover every square inch of the DBX707 in semi-aniline leather. My test car—equipped with this option—arrived specced out like a candy bar, with a rich metallic red wrapper over a caramel center. It felt like sitting inside a catcher’s mitt; I highly recommend spending the eight grand. The seats are grand-tourer worthy, but never feel too weakly bolstered in hard driving. It’s sumptuous. Even the 14-speaker, 800-watt stereo is the best I’ve ever heard in a test car. 

Of course, I hope you don’t want to skip any songs, because the infotainment system is a truly maddening knob-and-touchpad setup that forgoes a touchscreen entirely (editor’s note: future models will get a touchscreen). Even by the standards of touchpad systems, this one is impressively terrible. I gave up on switching songs via the stereo, and instead used my phone to do it at stoplights. Unfortunately, Apple CarPlay is wired, not wireless, and there’s nowhere to put your phone except on top of a wireless charger under the main console. Have fun digging that out.

This is where I began to remember that daily driving a supercar—even if it’s an SUV—is bound to come with downsides. Those massive carbon-ceramic brakes squeal like hogs in traffic, which is a supremely embarrassing way to turn heads. The mirrors don’t adjust far enough, leaving me with gaping blind spots. The trunk cover doesn’t actually fold up—it’s a solid piece of leather-wrapped particleboard—so although the cargo bay is spacious, a Costco run requires dismantling the car before leaving home.

The turning circle is enormous at 40.7 feet (bigger than the Cayenne and Urus), which makes parking the 78.7-inch-wide SUV harder than it already would have been. Road noise, even with all-season tires, is noticeably loud at highway speeds, and the standard 22-inch wheels don’t do favors to comfort over pavement gaps and potholes.

To cure annoyance, I stabbed the gas and then, inevitably, cackled. Zoloft has nothing on this drivetrain. All of my troubles immediately faded away. 

The DBX707 is an unbelievable marriage of supercar dynamics and SUV form, and there’s no vehicle on the planet I’d rather take to Costco. Just don’t be fooled: You’re not escaping all the headaches that come with owning a supercar just because it looks like an SUV. 

Photos: Victoria Scott for Motor1