PORTLAND, ORE. – It is so easy to greet the Aston Martin DBX with a great big eye roll. Here we go again, yet another purveyor of beautiful sporting machines selling out to produce a bloated SUV that's utterly anathema to all the cars that came before. Yet another cynical brand exercise where some classic styling cues and a desirable badge are applied to someone else's SUV platform. And yet another SUV that's hopelessly compromised by those same brand affectations.
In the DBX, the amount of extra space is genuinely surprising. We fit an enormous Britax rear-facing child seat in the rear and had the front passenger seat pushed far enough back for someone 6-foot-3 to comfortably sprawl out. That's rare for any SUV. There's also abundant leg- and headroom for rear passengers as well. Meanwhile, that graceful tail end conceals far more cargo space than Aston's official numbers indicate.
Unfortunately, this particular performance-oriented vehicle wore Pirelli Scorpion winter tires. This isn't a complaint; we've had a number of cars show up wearing summer tires in February that end up getting parked for a week. With unseasonably high temperatures in the Portland area, winter tires were a sad trombone on this day.
Ultimately, the DBX drives like a cohesively sporting vehicle, not just some go-fast componentry, stiff steering and suspension, and a loud silly engine applied to some otherwise ho-hum SUV. A traditional nine-speed automatic transmission is standard, and its torque converter ensures refined, creamy smooth shifts in regular driving. Downshifts are readily engaged as needed with a throttle prod, but it would be nice if they were summoned with similar haste when braking into a corner. They do just that in Sport+, calling up a lower cog just as you would if using the gorgeous, real-metal paddle shifters, but that drive mode also turns off the traction control.