Aston Martin DBS 2009

The DBS was Aston Martin's flagship from 2007 to 2012, hand-built at Gaydon on the bonded aluminium VH architecture it shared with the DB9. It did not replace the DB9 so much as sit above it: the 5.9-litre naturally aspirated V12, marketed as a 6.0, is quoted here at 510 hp, mounted at the front and driving the rear wheels through a rear-mounted transaxle. Carbon-fibre body panels, carbon-ceramic brakes as standard equipment and a three-stage adaptive damping system separated it from the softer DB9, and the earliest cars were sold with a six-speed manual before the Touchtronic 2 automatic joined the range.

What makes the car worth studying now is how analogue it is. The V12 has no turbochargers, no hybrid assistance and no cylinder deactivation; peak power arrives near 6,500 rpm and the engine is asked to make its case on capacity and revs alone. The transaxle layout keeps weight distribution close to even, the aluminium structure keeps mass below most rivals of the period, and the carbon-ceramic discs were fitted to every car rather than ticked as an option. Aston Martin's current flagship, the Vanquish 2025, uses a twin-turbo V12 and an eight-speed automatic, which is a useful measure of how far the brief has moved in fifteen years.

Why the Casino Royale DBS Is a Bond Landmark

The DBS reached cinemas before it reached customers. Pre-production cars were used for Casino Royale in 2006, and the sequence in which Bond leaves the road to avoid Vesper Lynd produced a cannon-assisted roll recorded as a world record for the most barrel rolls in a car. The model came back for the opening chase of Quantum of Solace two years later. We cover the film cars and their specification in the Aston Martin DBS Casino Royale feature, and the wider Bond lineage, which starts with the DB5 in Goldfinger, is indexed in Movie Cars.

In the Batman Garage collection this 2009 DBS is the bridge between those film cars and the modern British grand tourers photographed in the same garage. The gallery below shows it as it stands today, and the specification table follows underneath.