This grand tourer is plenty flawed, but spend some time and you’ll be hard-pressed to hold those shortcomings against it
How do you review the sort of car that splits you down the middle, and that doesn’t really need a straight review anyway? A 2025 Aston Martin DB12 Volante isn’t a Civic or Sorento, after all; nobody really much cares about its cupholder dimensions, nor are they necessarily looking for consumer advice so much as they are confirmation bias or escapism. An Aston buyer is going to spend how they’re going to spend.
Unlike imagined carnal conquests, visors aren’t typically taken as sexy. Pedestrian among automotive accoutrements, they’re functional, forgettable, and oughtn’t warrant a second’s thought. But what if they’re thoughtful, even artful? The sun visors aren’t nearly the DB12’s headline trait, not least against the Volante’s vanishing headliner itself. But against so much else that today feels almost common to the segment — 671 horsepower this, twin-turbo that — it’s a reminder that there’s more to making a car feel special than badging and marketing mythos.
From a high level, the Aston Martin DB12 Volante is more or less what you’d expect of the longstanding drophead tourer line. Contemporarily competitive power, wood, leather, presence. Baring a somehow even broader, breathier grille than before on an evolution of the brand’s modular bonded aluminum chassis, it’s all modern and ready-to-roll aggro.
Vehicle dynamics
Dynamically, the DB12 Volante sets itself up with much of the same legwork as the new Vantage. Higher-bandwidth dampers, e-LSD, new-darling Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 tires, and 400- and 360-mm brakes with the option of carbon-ceramics to gain 10 mm in diameter while saving 27 unsprung kilos (60 pounds). This presumably means Vantage-like expectation of slight fade from those up-specced brakes under heavy use, though this wasn’t experienced in the sort of respectful 8ºC driving we took those summer Michelins on. This also means your rotors will look ripply and cool within those cavernous 21-inch wheels, as they should for a further $17,400.
Mounting the same engine and transmission to well-near the same chassis, the Vantage symbolically yields 15 horsepower but zero torques to the DB12. The two cars are thus most differentiated by their wheelbase, the DB12 stretching those bunded aluminiums another ten centimetres between the axles. This affords room for those notional back seats, but more importantly, stretches to a more steadier footing for high speeds and sweeping routes.
For some sense of how that lines up, the DB12’s wheelbase measures 2,805 mm to the Vantage’s 2,705; the Ferrari 296’s 2,600; the Porsche 911’s 2,450; or the smooth-cruising Lexus LC 500’s 2,871 at the opposite end.
Managing this all is Bosch’s new six-way Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which monitors classic X-axis roll, Y-axis longitudinal pitch, and Z-axis rotational yaw angles along with newly measured X-axis surge, Y-axis sway, and Z-axis heave forces. This richer set of inputs helps the cars to better understand the ‘why’ of their traction conditions and more comprehensively direct each corner’s adaptively damped rebound, brake-vectored pull, and torque-vectored push through the electronically clutched differential.
Sumptuous interior
If there is a penalty box, then, it can only be the back seats — but even these are much too nice to warrant the pejorative. Cramped but classy, the rear seats reflect a thoughtfulness in appointment that only grows as you set your bag in the back and turn to take in the cabin. The DB12 makes resplendent use of leather, with interesting variety in patterned detailing throughout and such captivating available finishes as a near-metallic sheen in this test unit. Paired with swathes of warm, open-pore wood as seen here, the cabin marries the traditional cues of an aristocratic study with modern centre-stack piano blacks to rare effect.
The DB12’s cabin is unusually successful as a modern luxury space, feeling at once premium in the traditional senses without being held back by staid conservatism. Piano blacks are contentious, but they satisfactorily signal “modern” in a way that shoppers may not even realize they’ve been conditioned to expect. By this well-proportioned pairing, the DB12 even updates otherwise dated and hard-to-execute flourishes like diamond-patterned quilted stitching.
But then: those sun visors! No mere standard plastic-hinged units luxed-up in soft-touch envelopment, the DB12 Volante’s catch the eye on open-topped approach with bright, chromed-metal brackets. Recessed high enough to keep from catching unwanted glare, they’re a discrete bit of jewellery at the root — but the pleasure only carries after flipping them down.
On their reverse, a softly rounded rectangular bezel matches this cool-to-the-touch mirror-finished chrome; within its bounds, a hemispherical crater within a delicately raised perimeter. Dip a finger or thumb into its recess and the deep touch point distributes the force equally around the whole of your digit. Rub your finger in its leather softness for a moment of appreciation, then slide to feel every bit the smooth, elegantly damped heft that its dazzling chrome details promise. Finally, appreciate the distinctly deep, glassy mirror within. It’s a properly nice mirror, a gleaming final touch to this spot you’d have never realized could make such an impression.
I pray that buyers embrace Aston’s rich available colour and material selections, here, because their combinations truly elevate these cars into a class we haven’t yet seen.
Of course, bringing a classic formula up to modern sensibilities just as readily subjects it to modern pitfalls. In the Volante’s case, these come in the piano blacks’ blinding midday under-sunglass reflectivity, and in the frustration of today’s capacitive touch controls. The DB12 uses physical buttons and delightfully hefty rollers for all of its centre controls except for seat heating, which use capacitive controls that you will accidentally trigger as you reach to adjust the volume.
This was a problem in the Vantage (unexpected cheek heat while tracking at nearly 200 km/h in 30ºC sun, yikes!) and likewise continued over the course of a week at home in the DB12. Capacitive controls are also a problem on the steering wheel, proving a fiddly and cumbersome way about the digital cluster even with a weeks’ daily-driven time to get the feel.
That cluster also leaves for some wishing, its 10.25-inch screen feeling dropped-in at the expense of past cars’ jewel-like gauges. As in the Vantage as well, gear displays are small and frustrating to find when you’re in the gravy — something Aston answered it was looking at back when we drove that car, but which hasn’t changed. It rather cheapens the experience of an otherwise magnificent cabin, and that’s a criminal shame.
Also revealed in our week of testing were intermittent problems with the central 10.25-inch infotainment display. While usually operable, if labyrinthine, the system occasionally failed to fully fire up with the car and sat frozen several times over the course of the week, including on our video shoot. Not ideal in a car priced from $309,400, or $373,500 as tested here.
Still, the system must be credited as handsome and refreshingly compact in its letterbox proportions. Notably, too, the new fitment embraces OLED tech so that black pixels actually stay dark, helping the display to blend rather seamlessly into the centre stack. Infotainment supports your choice of wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto mobile projection, and despite the occasional need to stop, lock, and restart the car, the new system nevertheless marks a welcome departure from the old Mercedes-Benz infotainment.
Unremarkably sourced power
Mercedes sticks around under the bonnet though, and here’s where it gets contentious. Whereas their immediate predecessors fitted long V12s in a clear stratification above the V8 Vantage, the 2025 DB12 Coupe and Volante models fit the same Mercedes-AMG eight-cylinder as the smaller hot-shoe coupe.
It’s a potent mill, predictable and usable to whatever effect a driver requests. In the case of the Vantage, this intuitive response makes for easy rotation as you dial the traction management back; in the DB12, it frees the tourer to pull ahead and insert itself wherever it mighty well pleases. It sounds respectable, too, rumbling along with a more authentic exhaust note than most of Mercedes’ own implementations of the engine.
Nor is there any on-paper consequence in the DB line: both DB12 models are good to 325 km/h (202 mph), the Volante accelerating to 100 km/h just a tenth behind the coupe at 3.6 seconds. That power is the series’ highest ever, at that aforementioned 671 horsepower, while those 590 lb-ft of torque hit from 2,750 rpm and hold flat until 6,000.
This last point is the real shame, if anything. From Bentleys to Range Rovers, four-ish-litre German hot-vee twin-turbo V8s have proven the flavour of this 600-horsepower moment. Delivering such high torque from so early on, they’re objectively impressive engines and great for assertive autobahn cruising. We may roll our eyes at the attached ‘Super Tourer’ marketing, but it’s entirely sensible for Aston Martin to make a point of keeping up with today’s game of throwing 600–plus-horsepower into absolutely everything.
The resultant ease of accessing that power, however, arguably cheapens the experience. Riding that straight plateau from 2,750 to 6,000, the torque is all there, all straight away. This takes from drivers the occasion of consciously downshifting to rev into the torque, of ‘earning’ their pull. Like a cheat code that shortcuts the fun of the challenge, it misses some of what ought to be savoured in the journey to such speed.
Further detracting from the mood, the specification of the ZF 8HP eight-speed automatic is entirely sensible and hard to fault on any objective basis — but it doesn’t feel special like it ought to. Manually controllable via wheel-mounted paddles, it’s merely the same dutiful transmission as in most every BMW, Jag, and Jeep product on sale today.
Just as in the Vantage then, the powertrain that enables such performances robs it of some of its greatest occasion. However mitigated by the DB12’s more temperate, highway-cruising disposition, the siblings’ near characters and admittedly narrow differentiation still leaves it the primary axis of criticism.
Final thoughts
Nevertheless, these architectural and powerplant decisions mark a sensible move for the company and should facilitate relatively low-headache enjoyment of such a special way about daily life and rural runs alike. Really too, it’s the DB12’s grace, and particularly the rich sensory delight of this special cabin that calls to be felt and appreciated.
Now a positively elderly 30 years old, my tastes are beginning their shift from the hard-sprung to the hand-stitched. The DB12 Volante answers both, ever so slightly smoothing and steadying the exhilarating Vantage experience while expanding the tactile pleasures that make everyday egg-nog runs feel distinctly more special. Stronger standard audio and a more distinctly characterful powertrain would be nice, but Aston Martin has accomplished a rare feat in the DB12 Volante: making a luxury car that actually feels its price tag.
Now that I’ve given the Volante back though, you’ll have to pardon me while I sort out how to impress that brunette on our next date. She’s real, y’all — I swear.
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