A little secret about St Athan

Remember we recently went to Aston Martin’s new St Athan facility in South Wales and made a little film, skidding some cars around indoors?

You can watch it here. Well something I didn’t get into at the time was that the DB11 that slid so prettily about – both for our film and Aston’s – was coming to the TG garage straight afterwards.

Cobalt Blue with many options

Here it is. It’s a DB11 fitted with options. A quick run through the tech specs. It’s powered by a twin-turbo 5.2-litre V12, which drive the rear wheels through ZF’s 8spd auto. It develops 600hp at 6500rpm. As tech specs go, a large capacity twin turbo V12 is… generous.

It’s painted Cobalt Blue, has the ten-spoke shadow chrome wheels, the gloss black roof strake, panel, dark bonnet blades and dark finishing pack. The message here, clearly, is personalisation. The options outside are almost endless.

This is ours

Subdued, right? I didn’t get to spec the car myself, but when you see the absolute crimes I could have committed against the DB11, perhaps that’s just as well.

That’s Spectral Blue Caithness leather with Celestial perforations in the seats, the interior black pack, for contrast stitching and Flint seatbelts and  for the embossed headrests. There’s more, but It’d be boring to detail.

As far as tech goes, the DB11 isn’t really that sort of car – so I’ve got no lane departure or radar cruise, no dash cam or autopilot and as far as I can work out from the configurator, you can’t have them, either.

Given this is a GT, I find that a bit surprising. I expect they’ll be along shortly, once Aston has figured out how to make Merc’s tech work alongside its own.

It is well equipped though – cameras all around, and this has the Bang & Olufsen sound system. It is, it must be said, a lovely, lovely car to spend time in. The seats are beautifully shaped, the feel of the leather is sublime – in fact there’s only one thing I really, really don’t get on with…

Why the kitchen worktop?

It’s this, what Aston refers to as the Chopped Carbon interior trim. I’m sure that’s exactly what it is, but around here it’s referred to as the ‘kitchen worktop’. It looks like marble, feels like plastic, and suggests that Aston Martin couldn’t do woven carbonfibre properly.

Which we all know they can. It’s the first thing that everyone comments on when they open the door. I’m now tired of telling people it’s carbonfibre, not melamine…

However, in the grand scheme of monstrous things I could have done to the DB11’s cabin, this is nothing more than a light blip on the radar.

Other cabin bugbears

But it’s not the only small issue I have. The DB11 has a chunky new key. But it doesn’t fit in the slot that appears to have been designed for it.

This doesn’t matter too much as the car is keyless, but it would be nice if the slot actually served a proper purpose. You can put a phone there, but every time you accelerate it flops backwards or falls out altogether.

Angled airvents

These just look wrong – cheap and oddly angled. The electric seat controls, tucked down on the console by your left thigh, are fiddly to operate.

Junction vision

The wing mirrors are mounted pretty much at eye level, so obstruct visibility.

Now for the good stuff

The reason Aston struggles with some of this is that they simply don’t have the budget of the big German marques, such as Mercedes or BMW, or Volkswagen-owned Bentley. At least not yet. Aston Martin, despite Merc’s input, is still independent.

It does get a lot very right, though. Take this little button on the steering wheel. It has a partner on the other side that controls the adaptive suspension, while this one takes care of the drivetrain settings.

You simply press it, and the little graphic on the dashboard switches between GT, Sport, and Sport+ modes. It’s simple, and works very nicely indeed.

Most of the time I tend to pull the paddles myself, just to have that feeling of more control over the V12, and to indulge the noise that bit more often. It’s a stunning sounding thing.

You know when an engine just sounds perfectly matched to the car’s attitude and demeanour? That. It’s a glorious bark of a noise, calm and woofly at low revs, soaring and operatic as the revs climb.

Here’s the V12

Here it is, behind bars under its front-hinged bonnet. Front-hinged bonnets are just better. It suffers from no turbo lag, delivers its thrust smoothly, crisply and generously. The tuning of the gearbox isn’t quite perfect, so you get a little kick with each shift under load, but it’s as near as dammit.

Fit for (the odd) purpose

I’ll write more about how it drives next time, but I wanted to show you some of the things I’ve been up to with it so far. The boot isn’t big, but it will swallow a load of chainsaw gear.

Yes, that’s a bike

The cabin isn’t big, but I got my bike inside. Yes, I know this looks like I’ve totalled the leather, but I promise I haven’t. I took great care about that. I was so impressed with this, though. I didn’t have the right bracket to put my road bike on the roof with my Seasucker rack, and the Saris boot rack wouldn’t quite grip around the tailgate.

This was the last resort, but by tucking the forks around into the back seats and tolerating having the saddle blocking some of the switches, it worked. I drove it to Wembley for a race, no-one could believe I’d got a bike inside a brand new Aston (the wheels fitted almost perfectly in the boot), and I earned maximum kudos.

You can also see the electric seat controls in this shot. See what I mean? Small and fiddly.

Ribbon ‘n’ rack

Here it is with another bike on it. I like bikes. There’s a little story here that the Sherlocks among you might have been able to work out already. The DB11 performed wedding duties and looked great doing so. My wife and I then made the most of the reception, meaning the Aston was abandoned overnight.

Sunday morning was bright and warm so I hopped on the mountain bike, shoved the Seasucker bike rack in my pack and pedaled to get the car. Happy days. Naturally, the Aston wears the ribbon better than it wears the bike – I’m aware that I’m subjecting it to an ‘active lifestyle’. It’s not really a lifestyle car, but at least it’s actively coping.

That’s the story so far

So that’s where I am now – about 2300 miles in, and at roughly 11l/100km. Most people think it’s a stunning car, not everyone thinks blue is the right choice, nobody likes the bitsa carbon interior trim. It’s very comfortable, and because it rides more gently than you expect, fulfils the GT brief very, very well indeed.

It has back seats, and I’ve used them more than I expected. Including for two bridesmaids while the bride rode up front. That was admittedly tight. More soon. Don’t forget to take ten minutes to have a play on Aston’s configurator and post the links in the comments below. I’ll have a look…