The DBS Superleggera has to get an awful lot right in this section to inspire the sort of confidence and assurance you need to really enjoy a car of this size, bulk and effortless pace on the road.
The perfect mixture of lateral grip, body control, steering response and handling agility, tempered against long-striding high-speed stability, ride compliance and grand touring comfort, isn’t an easy one to concoct. And, as both the Ferrari 812 Superfast and the Bentley Continental GT have already proven this year, even with the latest chassis and suspension technology it’s still easy to narrowly miss the super-GT class’s pimple-like dynamic bullseye to one side or the other.
But this time, Aston Martin hasn’t missed. The DBS Superleggera can satisfy the need, at times, to be supple-riding, easy-going and undemonstrative. Leave the car’s powertrain and suspension set to GT mode and its bump absorption is somewhere between that of a 12-cylinder Aston Martin DB11 and a Aston Martin Vantage. Its ride filters and isolates a little; feels fluent and breathes with longer-wave inputs; massages away the nastiest shorter and sharper edges without fussing; and yet keeps the Aston’s body flat and level, and always in close contact with the road. A fairly negligible bit of head toss, as the car’s laterally stiff rear axle deals with bigger inputs affecting one side of the axle or the other, is the closest the car ever gets to being uncomfortable.