ON MY ANNUAL tour of British car makers last week I read a biography of the Roman orator Seneca, with whom I discovered I have a lot in common. For instance, Seneca was an unforgivable hypocrite: He preached Stoicism—simplicity, non-materialism, the ready acceptance of whatever came—but as one of the richest men in the empire he never actually practiced it.
I too am deeply skeptical of the so-called luxury lifestyle but, like Seneca, I do not consider it beneath me. So I was pleased to be received at Aston Martin’s headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and handed the key-fob to a new DB11 Volante ($233,071, as tested), the drop-top version of the company’s grand touring scimitar.
I had 48 hours to explore England, so long as I could make my next appointment at Rolls-Royce in West Sussex. The weather was right out of Chaucer. As I was sitting in the car deciding which way to go, the BBC Two presenters brought Sting on to play madrigal odes to spring on his lute.
Of course! I dialed the navigation for the seaside town of Brighton, immortalized by the stoner-film “Quadrophenia” (1979), inspired by The Who album of the same name, featuring Sting as a cruel, disaffected gang tough, albeit dreamy.
With the canvas top stowed and the Bang & Olufsen hollering “Love, Reign O’er Me,” I throttled up to join the M1—rum rum rum-RHAHHHH, BWAAHHHH, LOOVVEEE!!!—the cars ahead giving way long before I reached them.
Readers sometimes express common-sense exasperation at a six-figure price tag. “It’s just a car!” goes this refrain, “It gets you from A to B.” I agree, especially when it comes to exotic cars whose performance is utterly inaccessible on the street. In these cases dollars are inches in a sad game of “mine’s bigger.”
But truly beautiful street-legal cars are rare. As evidence I give you the Aston’s competitive set, including the Mercedes-AMG S63 Cabriolet, Ferrari California T, Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet and Bentley Continental GT Speed. These are all highly accomplished, desirable automobiles, and I reckon each would be a step quicker than the Aston as getaway car in any theoretical heist of the Crown Jewels.
2019 Aston Martin DB11 Volante
Base Price $216,495
Price, as Tested $233,071
Powertrain Twin-turbocharged direct-injected 4.0-liter DOHC V8; eight-speed automatic transmission with manual shift mode; rear drive with mechanical limited-slip differential and torque vectoring
Power/Torque 503 hp at 6,000 rpm//513 lb-ft @ 2,000-5,000 rpm
Length/Width/Height/Wheelbase 187.0/76.7/51.1/110.4 inches
Curb Weight 4,133.6 pounds
0-100 mph 8.8 seconds
Top Speed 187 mph
Cargo Capacity 8.47 cubic feet
But parked next to the Aston, they look like Soviet farm equipment. You want to impress friends and neighbors? Beauty is performance you can use.
Volante is what Aston Martin calls its convertibles. Roughly translated as “flier,” it’s also the Spanish word for “steering wheel” or “shuttlecock,” which sounds right. Built on the same rock-solid aluminum space frame as the DB11 coupe, the Volante weighs 253 pounds more than the coupe with same engine, due to the elaborate roof mechanism and added structural bracing.
The way it works at Aston these days is that the company buys engines from Mercedes-AMG, built to the company’s specs; Aston also avails itself to Daimler’s fairly flawless cabin electronics, including touch-sensitive rotary controller and infotainment display. Both of these partnerships, let’s call them, has resulted a much better Aston Martin product while freeing its designers to focus on gorgeousness.
The Volante’s navigation system was easy to use, with intuitive menu structure and bright, clear graphics. None of which was remotely true of the previous system.
There’s nothing wrong with the German-built engine, either: a warmly resonant, mad-with-torque twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 (503 hp and 513 lb-ft 2,000-5,000 rpm) winding the works of an eight-speed automatic transmission and limited-slip rear differential with torque vectoring. Unlike the coupe, the Volante will not be made available with the 600-hp V12—not yet. But with 0-100 mph acceleration in 8.8 seconds and a top speed, top-down, of 187 mph, the V8-powered Volante has plenty of force majeure, Major.
The Volante’s underside is also well credentialed: the front double-wishbone suspension and rear multi-links are supported by coil springs, anti-roll bars and with three-mode adaptive damping (GT, Sport and Sport +). The powertrain and vehicle dynamics (steering, braking, stability control) also get feistier on demand. The standard 20-inch alloy wheels and sport tires stick like crazy. But hitting a chuckhole at low speed can judder the affected wheel and zing the lightweight frame.
Not wanting to collect cycling pensioners in the car’s catfish grille, I drove pretty responsibly, withal. The Volante’s driving character is much the same as the coupe: big and broad—as in broadsword—authoritative, effortless, unstressed, even a bit lazy at low speed, like Achilles in his tent. Around town the exhaust note is a thick drumming like an old boat. But the sound hardens and sharpens with rpm to a bright, full-throated wail.
Aston put lots of quid into the top mechanism. The eight-layer powered canvas roof that can be raised or lowered at up to 31 mph in 16 seconds or less—there’s a bid for attention while you’re trundling through the town square. Volante’s curvaceous decklid, integrating the leather-upholstered tonneau and twin head buttresses, makes the DB11’s heavy haunches and Coke-bottle waist even more explicit.
The DB11 is a stunner, a slayer, an aluminized drop of British masculinity. Making it into a convertible didn’t hurt the looks one little bit. But driving the Volante in the open air is not for the shy, because rest assured, everybody is looking. I know a few motorists raced to catch up, hoping to catch a glimpse of a gorgeous footballer or celebrity presenter, and found only a wind-chapped old Yank.
I’m disappointed too.