2026 Aston Martin DB12 S | UK Review
Is a shoutier, 700hp super-GT automatically a better one in the UK?
Not so long ago, the local authority, beacon of wisdom that it is, decided to install average speed cameras on the A road that runs from the town where I live to the town where I grew up. The 30mph stretches at either end - y’know, the bits where people actually live and push pushchairs and need to cross the road occasionally - were obviously too tricky to bother with, so they just enforced the five-mile stretch in between. The bit lined with trees and fields where comparatively few people live and where the highway is as wide as a runway and often as straight. The bit which is now deemed to require a 40mph limit for its entire length.
Now, having lived at either end of this road for four decades off and on, I can tell you it is not an accident blackspot (or no more so than the roads that bookend it), and at face value it's hard to see why it might be deserving of the nation's most pointless speed limit. But because it is wide and sweeping, people have, in the past, in an effort to see their loved ones quicker or get to work on time - or perhaps because God endowed them with the Verstappen-like talent needed to go 60mph in a mostly straight line - gone a little quicker when conditions and common sense permitted. No doubt the taxpayer-funded study of the matter showed that happening en masse. Because of course it did.
So now, rather than questioning the appropriateness of an arterial A road running at the practical equivalent of a funeral procession, we’re all made to do the speed that would have previously seen you overtaken more times than Nicholas Latifi. And then, to add insult to injury, when you get to the opposite end, in either direction that doesn’t take you onto a high street (where there’s nothing to stop you doing 140mph), you’ve got an equally well-sighted and lightly populated stretch of dual carriageway to enjoy. Except you won’t be doing that because whichever way you turn, you’re limited to 50mph by average speed cameras.
I mention this not because it is revelatory - doubtless the situation will be familiar to many - but because it helps to frame Aston’s efforts to improve the potency of the DB12 in its tweaked S variant. Perhaps in a perfect world, we would all appreciate a stroll through the 4.0-litre V8’s low end. But imprisoned as we frequently are in the intervals between canary yellow ANPR cameras, you need to get your kicks where you can. Which means you’re unlikely to quibble with the way the flagship model now lifts up its skirts at the slightest provocation. Yes, we were told it’s about progressiveness and a more tactile sense of control when accessing an unchanged 590lb ft of torque - but it’s also about reminding you, frequently and fervently, that there’s a good reason you shelled out upwards of £200k for an Aston Martin.
Accessing this kind of fizz is doubly pertinent in the real world, because roomy, vanishing-point A roads tend to be what the DB12 does best. Attaining the new S grade has no real bearing on the car’s super-GT status (save for reinforcing it with 700hp), so the model is still at its most likeable when whooshing you convincingly through long corners. Or making mega-speeds feel like 65mph on the motorway. It will make a fair fist of a B road, too, though its size inevitably comes into play here - and if the gradient changes abruptly, you do tend to notice the two-tonne (with anyone in it) kerbweight, especially if the chassis is loaded up mid corner. An imperturbable 911 Turbo S, the DB12 is not.
But in terms of its place in Aston’s lineup, that’s probably fair enough. There is, after all, now the option of a 680hp Vantage S if you want to scythe between hedgerows; the DB12 is meant to be about whisking you 300-odd miles in style. And rest assured, it will deposit you at the top of a mountain pass like the ghost of Lazenby. Granted, you’ll need to remove the legs of any adult hoping to sit in the back, but that’s okay because the modestly proportioned boot means the car is more about a weekend away for two anyway. And while not everyone at PH admired the stacked exhaust or the sticky-out sills and splitter, everyone at PH is a car nerd; the wider public, unencumbered by foreknowledge of the S design tweaks, and seeing only bottle green Aston, appeared to swoon like debutantes.
When it comes to tapping into people’s notion of what a very expensive, very fast grand tourer ought to look like, it might be fair to say that no one is currently doing it better. Although many, many firms are making a better fist of their infotainment systems. Needless to say, the roll-out of Apple CarPlay Ultra was intended to paper over the cracks, but if you decline that option you’re stuck with a native OS that looks increasingly like a piece of prototype software still awaiting its user interface. Which might be forgivable if it weren’t so slow - but waiting for the ADAS button to work or finding your preferred DAB station is agonising. Think Network Rail ticket machine slow.
While this is hardly a new state of affairs, it is notable that Aston’s update of the DB12 hasn’t made it sufficiently far under the skin to do anything about the niggly stuff. Ditto the carried-over Mercedes' parts bin components that continue to grate at the car's asking price. Instead, the S is more about derivative bragging rights (technically, the standard model remains on sale), and it’s fair to say the fine-tuning we experienced in Spain back in the spring has not suffered in the transition from left-hand drive to right-hand drive. A livelier, loosened-up DB12, better resolved across the board was the intention; generally speaking, a more likeable version of Aston’s super-GT is the result.
And if an extended go in the UK serves to highlight some of the model’s broader limitations (the Bentley Continental GT is still roomier, better refined and technologically smarter), it also underlines Aston’s knack for keeping the driver front and centre. With its slightly sleeker steering, pointier chassis and fiery response to the throttle pedal, the S not only does a superior job of foregrounding your relationship with the road, it also delivers the kind of interactiveness that makes getting anywhere quickly seem like such an event. And when the opportunities to do that have become so few and far between, more immediacy feels like absolutely the right sensation to evoke in a raked, V8-powered Aston Martin. Throw in an iPhone 18 Pro and you’ll never look back.
SPECIFICATION | 2026 ASTON MARTIN DB12 S
Engine: 3,982cc twin-turbo V8
Transmission: 8-speed auto, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 700@6,000rpm
Torque (Ib ft): 590@2,750-6,000rpm
0-62mph (secs): 3.5
Top speed (mph): 202
Weight (kg): 1,820 (DIN)
MPG (official combined): 23.7
CO2 (g/km): 269 (WLTP)
Price: £205,000 (starting)
I think it was being used as background and the writer wasn’t hoping to stir up the PH hordes to attack the local council offices.
We know it, they know we know it, and yet they continue to implement evermore sophisticated systems to enforce nonsensical speed limits, whilst ignoring the condition of our highways.
I think it was being used as background and the writer wasn t hoping to stir up the PH hordes to attack the local council offices.
I think it was being used as background and the writer wasn t hoping to stir up the PH hordes to attack the local council offices.
We know it, they know we know it, and yet they continue to implement evermore sophisticated systems to enforce nonsensical speed limits, whilst ignoring the condition of our highways.
- starter 12v one excluded obviously...
Either they're all good, all bad or... you're just a hypocrite. Obviously.
- starter 12v one excluded obviously...
Either they're all good, all bad or... you're just a hypocrite. Obviously.
A hybrid motor is a second powertrain. The 296 drives 25km on electricity alone off a 7.45kWh pack. That’s not a bigger starter, that’s over complicated legislated hybrid crud.
“Hybrids replace the starter” doesn’t help you. Your phone replaced your alarm clock. Doesn’t make your alarm clock a phone.
And the GT 53 point is just wrong. EQ Boost is a 48v starter-generator on its own 48v lithium battery, nothing like a 12v. The car still has a separate 12v battery too.
One makes the car go. One makes the engine start. Not hypocrisy, just knowing what the parts do. Obviously.
- starter 12v one excluded obviously...
Either they're all good, all bad or... you're just a hypocrite. Obviously.
A hybrid motor is a second powertrain. The 296 drives 25km on electricity alone off a 7.45kWh pack. That s not a bigger starter, that s over complicated legislated hybrid crud.
Hybrids replace the starter doesn t help you. Your phone replaced your alarm clock. Doesn t make your alarm clock a phone.
And the GT 53 point is just wrong. EQ Boost is a 48v starter-generator on its own 48v lithium battery, nothing like a 12v. The car still has a separate 12v battery too.
One makes the car go. One makes the engine start. Not hypocrisy, just knowing what the parts do. Obviously.
But that's all still "eco-crud" to you right? Obviously.
I do wish Aston would copy Ferrari's seat-pattern options. The latter always offers a variant of the classic Daytona-style design, so why doesn't Aston also offer a heritage-type chair, such as the classic below?
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