Key considerations
- Available for £150,000
- 5.2-litre V12 petrol twin turbo, rear wheel drive
- Hugely quick, comfortable and easy to drive
- Cabin and infotainment could maybe have been more special
- Fixed price servicing is about £850 a year
- Ferrari 812 is nervier and at least £70k dearer secondhand
'While we wanted to create a very, very fast car, it was crucial that we didn't terrify less experienced drivers.' That's what Aston's Chief of Vehicle Attribute Engineering Matt Becker said about the Superleggera on its launch in 2018. It was the successor to the 2012-18 gen-two Vanquish which, thanks to its thoroughly developed aluminium box section VH platform and the power and glory of its big-inch naturally aspirated V12, had been rightly hailed as an accomplished package of comfort, stability, balance, agility, grip and performance, a proper GT that worked really well on British roads.
The Vanquish wasn't quite as bonkers as Ferrari's F12 but then again, at £196,000 in 'basic' trim, it wasn't as expensive either. Setting aside external comparisons, the Vanquish was a class act in its own right, so from a succession point of view the Superleggera had big boots to fill. It was designed to leverage Aston's heritage on track and road into a grand touring experience of the highest quality. Which it did.
The closest rival to the Superleggera again came from Ferrari in the shape of the 812 Superfast, but at £225k before options the Aston was nearly £40k cheaper than the 812 and in fact the two cars were quite different in character. Though either of them would easily stop the traffic in downtown Knightsbridge, the Aston belied its dramatic bodywork to some extent by delivering a surprisingly easy and accessible driving experience, if that was what you wanted. It was also ballistically quick on demand however and its physical size did demand your attention when threading through traffic.
The Vanquish had a six-speed automatic gearbox, carbon ceramic brakes as standard and that 5.9 V12 producing 573hp and 457lb ft, giving it a 0-62mph time of 4.1sec and a top speed of 183mph. The Superleggera was more overtly tied in with motorsport, achieving the highest downforce of any production Aston (60kg front, 120kg rear) at its higher top speed of 211mph, a rate of knots it was able to achieve by building on the aero concepts first brought in on the DB11, like the gill-like front wheel arch 'curlicues', 'open stirrups' (who comes up with this stuff?) and Aeroblade air ducting network. The Superleggera added an enhanced Aeroblade II setup plus F1-inspired bits like a double diffuser which, with the front splitter, air-dam and aero-optimised underside, generated big downforce without increasing undesirable drag.
The Superleggera also had a smaller V12 engine than the Vanquish, but not by much: it was still 5.2 litres. The shortfall in displacement was more than made up for by the addition of two turbochargers. Power rose to 725hp, and the torque lift was even more mighty, not just in terms of the new peak figure of 664lb ft but also in the width of the rev band in which it was delivered, starting at a basement-level 1,800rpm and not petering out until 5,000rpm. In the non-turbo Vanquish, peak torque didn't arrive until 5,500rpm. The Superleggera's grunt battered its way to the rear wheels via a ZF eight-speed torque converter auto and a carbon fibre propshaft.
Like for like, the Volante convertible that was launched in 2019 was around 170kg heavier than the coupe. The solid-roofed car had a claimed 0-62 time of 3.4sec and a 0-100 of 6.4sec. The ragtop took 0.2sec longer to hit 62mph from rest but the 211mph top speed was identical. The price wasn't, however: it came in at £247,500. If you'd like to read more on that, and you should because it's a fine machine, have a squint at our Matt's review here.
Three special editions were released in 2019. There was the Tag edition with Tag Heuer embroidery, Tag Heuer wing badges and a 'free' Tag Heuer watch. At the end of 2019 a Concorde Edition commissioned by Aston Martin's Bristol dealership was announced. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Concorde's first flight, it had CAA identifier numbers on its side skirts, BA-liveried roof, splitter and rear diffuser, a silhouette of Concorde on the carbon fibre roof, solid aluminium side strakes, an Alcantara headlining with a sonic boom graphic, paddle shifters made from chunks of titanium recycled from a Concorde engine's turbine blades and various other cosmetic fripperies. Ten of those Concorde Editions were to be built at an extravagant £321,250 a pop - a £96k markup.
In May 2019, marking the 50th anniversary of the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Aston released an OHMSS edition in 007-approved olive green with unique alloys and classic pleated seats in black leather. Fifty were made at the slightly cheesy price of £300,007. There's one for sale at the end of this story if you're interested.
As you might remember, James Bond's new mucker Nomi (Lashana Lynch) drove a Superleggera in the last 007 movie No Time To Die, giving rise to another special in August 2020, the 007 Edition in Ceramic Grey with a black carbon fibre roof and gloss black diamond-cut wheels. Production was limited to 25 units and the price was £279,025. Wonder why they didn't knock eighteen quid off that?
Whatever, on its launch in 2018 some thought that the original Superleggera was a tad overpriced. This view is now being reflected in used prices. Today you can get a three-year old (2019) example for under £150k. If you set that against the last new Superleggera price of £266,000 in 2022, when the Superleggera name was dropped to simplify the Aston line-up, £150k could be perceived as a bargain. Better yet from the hopeful buyer's perspective is the number of cars you get to choose from. There were more than forty Superleggeras on sale in the UK when we were putting this story together, most if not all of them on PH Classifieds.
Does that seem like a surprisingly high number to you? Is there some dark secret about secondhand Superleggeras that we need to know about? Let's screw in our strongest monocle and commence collective beard stroking in search of the truth - if there is such a thing these days.
SPECIFICATION | ASTON MARTIN DBS SUPERLEGGERA
Engine: 5,204cc twin turbo V12
Transmission: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 725@6,500rpm
Torque (lb ft): 664@1,800-5,000rpm
0-62mph (secs): 3.4
Top speed (mph): 211
Weight (kg): 1,693
MPG: 22.9
CO2 (g/km): 285
Wheels (in): 21 x 9.5 (f), 21 x 11.5 (r)
Tyres: 265/35 (f), 305/30 (r)
On sale: 2018 - 2022
Price new: £225,000
Price now: from £150,000
Note for reference: car weight and power data are hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it's wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.
ENGINE & GEARBOX
Thanks to its water-to-air charge-cooled turbos the Superleggera was a quick car, not just in its headline acceleration figures but also in its equally impressive in-gear performance. In fourth gear it would cover the 50-100mph split in a scant 4.2 seconds, and the 50-70mph in two seconds dead. That and the 3.4sec 0-62 were claimed figures which not every independent tester was able to replicate, but who cared about the odd tenth of a second when you had the most powerful and torquey Aston engine in history under that gorgeous clamshell bonnet, given epic voice by an active-valve quad tailpipe titanium exhaust. The thrunge from 2,500rpm was hilarious. The 812 tramped on at higher speeds in an even more jawdropping fashion, but not much else could keep up with a Superleggera.
Although the ZF torque converter box could get a bit flustered under pressure, kicking down far more frequently than necessitated by the wall of torque, transmission shifting in everyday driving was extremely civilised. Owners were more than happy to have exemplary gearbox behaviour 95 per cent of the time, or 100 per cent of the time if ten-tenths driving was never going to be on the agenda. The 812 was more edgy, which was fine if that's what you preferred, but if you chose the Ferrari you had to accept the possibility of it being more mentally taxing than the Aston in normal use - if driving anything like either of these cars could ever be summarised as normal.
The standard Aston warranty was three years/unlimited mileage. For pre-owned vehicles up to 10 years old Aston runs a 'Timeless' extended warranty, implemented by Car Care Plan who also operate the Porsche equivalent. It'll be over £2k a year for that but an independent assessment of your Aston just before the factory warranty expires might convince you that it's worth it. It's certainly something to think about and make a decision on when the time comes. PHers have had good things to say about Will Khoo and his team at AJ Tech, a factory trained independent Aston specialist on the eastern edge of Dartmoor.
Fixed price servicing in the dealer network will cost you between £790 and £900 every year or 10,000 miles. Air and pollen filters should be changed every 20,000 miles at £315 and £135 respectively. After four years/40,000 miles the transaxle and auto diff oil should be replaced at £220 and £130 respectively. The spark plugs have to be replaced every seven years/70k miles. That will cost you £1,150.
CHASSIS
The bonded aluminium chassis of the Superleggera was basically the same as the DB11's. It went down the well travelled suspension path of front double wishbones (forged) at the front and a multilink rear with anti-roll bars at both ends. Its track widths were 10mm and 20mm wider front and rear than the DB11, with which it shared a 'proper' mechanical limited slip differential (the lesser Vantage making do with the more commonplace electronic diff). This was linked to Dynamic Stability Control, torque vectoring, all the usual acronymed driver aids, with suspension geometry and bushes and the Skyhook adaptive damping all tuned to suit the DBS's extra sportiness. It rode 5mm lower than the DB11 and, courtesy of the rear-mounted front-mounted engine (if you see what we mean) plus rear transaxle transmission, gave the car a laudable 51 front/49 rear weight distribution.
Add in the three driving modes - GT, for touring, Sport, for er, sport, and Sport Plus for a bit more sport than that - and you could see that the Superleggera had everything it needed to handle well. Fine individual components are all very well of course but that counts for nothing if the blend isn't right. Fortunately, people like Matt Becker made sure that Aston got that mix right. Despite its size it was predictable, benign and comfortable, it didn't crumble under pressure, and all three modes were perfectly useable on normal roads, even Sport Plus.
The speed-dependent steering was fast, with the same 2.4 turns lock to lock ratio as the DB11. This helped the driver to believe that they weren't in charge of something as massive as it kind of looked from the outside. The LSD wasn't necessarily always as helpful in extremis when there might be too little blur between grip and slip. If you fancied your chances with the stability system switched off at big speeds you needed to be on your mettle.
As in the Vanquish, carbon ceramic braking was standard, extremely powerful and (unusually) undemanding for this genre, with a six-pot/410mm setup at the front and a four-pot/360mm mix at the rear, where a choice of 21-inch forged wheels (Y-spoke or lightweight twin-spoke) wore DBS-exclusive 305/30 Pirelli P Zero tyres. You could choose from four caliper colours: black, red, grey or yellow. As far as we know nobody specified a different colour for each corner.
BODYWORK
The 'Superleggera' script on the bonnet first appeared on an Aston in 1967 when the Italian coachbuilder Touring was heavily involved with the British marque. Aston's 'superlight' construction format of carbon fibre panels on an extruded aluminium underframe was more computer mouse than artisanal hammer. It brought the Superleggera's advertised dry weight below the 1,700kg mark, although it was more like 1,900kg with a full complement of liquids on board.
The predatory stance was meant to evoke the spirit of its GT ancestors, which sounds like something you might hear in a wigwam. The complexity of the body and airflow components made it a nightmare to clean. You got your man to do it.
INTERIOR
If you were blindfolded, put into a Superleggera and then a DB11, and asked to nominate which car you were in when the blindfold was removed, you might be hard pushed to tell the difference.
The driving position was very nice for big trips provided you were OK with a slight bias in the angle of the steering column, and you did get 'Sport Plus' versions of the steering wheel and the (fully adjustable) seats, but there was nothing particularly standout about the Superleggera's cabin and it wasn't large by any stretch.
It was nice to occupy though. Standard Superleggera kit included keyless entry, tyre pressure monitoring, a 360-degree camera with Parking Distance Display and Park Assist, DAB audio with Bluetooth and iPod, iPhone and USB playback, and sat-nav. Although the wheel'n'pad operated eight-inch screen infotainment setup wasn't earth-shatteringly great, the Bang & Olufsen BeoSound audio was suitably Bang-ing, but then so it should have been at £5.5k. The standard audio has been known to go AWOL from time to time but this is usually fixable by a software reflash. Some early cars had to have their central stacks replaced under warranty.
Understandable materials like Caithness or Balmoral leather and Alcantara sat alongside more head-scratching trim options in the brochure such as 'dyed tamo open pore inlay' or, for an extra £2k, seats fussily cloaked in 'triaxel' diamond quilted leather. The 'chopped carbon' trim (answers on a postcard please) somehow didn't inspire. The touchpanel below the gear selection buttons was slightly picky about your angle of finger attack.
Children who were still small enough to be towered over by frazzled parents would fit comfortably in the back two seats, and there were even Isofix points for a booster seat so long as the front-seat passenger ahead didn't mind losing most of their legroom. The shallow but usefully wide boot was a decent size, but expecting chilled champagne to come out of it at the same temperature it went in at was a forlorn hope unless you had some kind of Stark Industries cooler bag as it got quite hot in there. Aston did various fitted luggage options for it.
PH VERDICT
When they weren't calling it a 'brute in a suit', Aston categorised the Superleggera as a 'Super GT'. Not sure what the capital S meant, but the reality of it was a capital motor for covering extended mileages in considerable comfort. It looked and sounded amazing, went down the road like a cat with a banger tied to its tail and handled far better than you'd expect from something so substantial and luxurious. The cabin could maybe have been a bit more distinctive, and the gearbox was arguably the car's weakest link, but these were minor gripes in a generally brilliant overall package that cleverly pulled off the difficult trick of combining luxury, comfort and nailed-on handling with major performance. We found no Superleggera-specific problems other than that occasional audio fritzing we mentioned a minute ago, so there's your answer to the question we posed at the beginning about dark secrets. There are none.
The most affordable Superleggera as we went to press was this 2019 coupe in Onyx Black It has the lived-in look you'd expect from the highest mileage example on sale in the UK, but the £149,995 price reflects that and 45,000 miles is hardly Superleggy. Add £7,000 to your budget and you can chip nearly 26,000 miles off that in this year-one car. Many, if not most, Superleggeras came out of the factory in sober colours like grey, black and white, so for something a bit different how about this 2019 5,000-miler in Divine Red with bronze wheels? It's a tenner under £170k, which is not bad given that most sub-10,000-mile cars typically start at £175k.
Let's not discriminate against uncolourful colours. Grey needn't be grey if it's Tungsten Silver, one of Aston's 'Q' special paints. This 2019 car looks the absolute beeswax and because it's done 14,000 miles it limbos in under that £170k bar. Used Volante convertibles are generally not found below £200k. This one makes it thanks to its relatively high 16,000 miles.
Money no object? This 171-mile OHMSS Edition could be the answer to that pesky 'I've simply got too much cash' problem. It has the boot drinks case to impress your own personal Tiffany Shortstocking (or male equivalent thereof), if that sort of thing is your wont and is priced at £299,980. That's a discount actually as it was £306,000 last September when it had done just 80 miles. We know this to be the case because that's when our Matt wrote a Spotted piece on it. Clearly the OHMSS hasn't found its true value yet. Wonder what that might be? Whatever it is it won't be coming this way. The name's Skint, James Skint.
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