Aston Martin MY25 DBX707 in Synapse Orange. Aston Martin
When most people think of Aston Martin, they think of James Bond in a sleek, silver sports car hurtling along the narrow, winding streets of cosmopolitan cities while chasing bad guys. While that’s certainly part of the luxury automaker’s mythology, the modern Aston Martin Lagonda is about much more than how a martini is made (shaken, not stirred). The company has successfully expanded its luxury horizons thanks to its popular SUV known as the DBX.
The Aston Martin DBX707, a five-seater high-performance SUV launched a little over three years ago, has recently been updated, and Observer traveled to Napa, California earlier this month to get a taste of this awesome 687-horsepower monster. After spending an afternoon driving the bright orange 2025 Aston Martin DBX707 along the Pacific Coast Highway and winding roads past beautiful wineries, it’s easy to see why the wealthy are flocking to this car. The DBX707 offers a sports car experience in an SUV package with leather trim, a raucous exhaust note, and handling to match, all starting at $249,000.
Other specifications include a 0-60 mph time of 3.1 seconds, a much more user-friendly infotainment system than the previous generation, a newly designed interior that is more ergonomically friendly, and a host of software-based chassis enhancements that make an already fast vehicle even more agile on the road.
Alex Long, Aston Martin’s director of product and market strategy, said that in the three and a half years since its launch, the DBX has become a “conquest car” — a car that has transformed the brand by attracting younger, mostly female, customers. Sales figures for 2021, the DBX’s first full year on the market, showed that half of SUV buyers were new to the brand.
“For a brand that’s been around for 111 years and has only sold SUVs for three of those years, this is a step into the unknown in terms of what kind of customer base is going to come into this market,” Long told the Observer. “We have a customer base that came to Aston Martin to buy an everyday car, and then they’re looking further into our sports cars, and they’re building an Aston Martin garage and joining the family in that sense.”
Long said women are more likely to buy the DBX over other Astons, and once they trade up for the powerful SUV, they become more interested in the brand and are more likely to consider adding an Aston Martin sports car to their garage. “That’s because they’re used to the driving experience, the technology, the familiarity,” he said.
Performance SUVs are a counterweight to the volatility of the sports car market.
Aston has made only sports cars for the last 100 years of its history and is one of the few well-known independent automakers still in operation. (Aston Martin was previously owned by Ford and Geely, which still has a stake, but billionaire Lawrence Stroll has a majority stake.) Long says the small company’s introduction of SUVs has helped ease the boom-and-bust cycles that are common in the sports car market.
“Aston has a history of being prone to the life cycle of its flagship sports cars,” he said. “They do well for a few years, then there’s a period of managed decline, then they plateau, then a new car comes along and they do well again. I see the DBX as bringing an end to that cycle.”
Porsche was the first automaker to float the idea of building high-performance SUVs to make up for the volatility of the sports car market. Twenty years ago, Porsche launched the highly profitable Cayenne SUV. Sports car enthusiasts resisted the move, but it proved effective for Porsche and other luxury automakers. Today, nearly every luxury automaker (except maybe McLaren), including Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini, and Ferrari, offers a high-performance SUV.
“Not only are we establishing ourselves as a brand in this segment, but the segment itself is attracting people from other segments,” Long said of the strategy. “Fewer people are making luxury sedans, so sedan customers are moving into the luxury SUV space. Fewer people are buying other types of high-performance cars or expensive cars, so they’re moving into the luxury SUV segment because it actually ticks a lot of boxes.”
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