Tag: Car Reviews

The Aston Martin DBS Superleggera is the ultimate evolution of the DB11. It is also the return of the famous DBS initials, and as such has a lot to live up to. We take an Alpine drive to find out more.

Road test taken from Ultimate Supercar. Words: Tim Pitt.

The Swift Voyager is anything but. I’ve been stuck behind this meandering motorhome for miles, on a route so tortuously twisty that even 725hp isn’t enough to blast past. Then, miraculously, the road unravels and stretches out ahead: a long straight through a tunnel of trees. I won’t need telling twice. I click down two ratios with the left paddle and – woooompf – the rolling roadblock shrinks to a speck in my mirrors. Now that’s swift.

We are high in the German Alps on the launch of the Aston Martin DBS Superleggera. The lush landscape is dotted with charming chalets and bemused cows. Julie Andrews is surely on standby, ready to burst into song at any moment. The Aston Martin DBS, though, is making V12 music of its own, its gargling growl building to a chest-beating bellow that echoes along the valley.

We reach a barrier and a toll booth. The road up the mountain is private and thus traffic-free. Well, apart from several other Superleggeras queueing up behind. This could be quite special. I’m waved through and… go! The Aston catapults into a series of switchbacks, bespoke Pirelli P Zeros scrabbling for traction as 900Nm of torque hits the tarmac. The back-end breaks loose around a particularly tight hairpin, but ESC and torque vectoring (with, um, a bit of help from my driving) keep things calmly under control. Onwards and ever-upwards, my ears are popping almost as furiously as the four tailpipes.

The flow of the road is hypnotic, The Aston carves between steep-stacked corners with a fluidity that belies its bulk. Then, all too soon, we are at the summit, a gaggle of Chinese tourists reaching for their cameras as the gleaming Hyper Red DBS roars into view. It feels like a hero’s welcome, but dark clouds are gathering and, within a minute, it’s raining heavily. That’s mountain weather for you. I switch on the lights and wipers and potter steadily back downhill. Not such a hero now, it seems.

The Aston Martin DBS Superleggera is the new top tier in the DB11 range. This kicks off with the 510hp V8 – available as both coupe and Volante convertible – then steps up to the 630hp V12 AMR. For the uninitiated, AMR is Aston Martin’s new sportier sub-brand (complete with yellow go-faster stripes), but the DBS goes further still. This ‘Super GT flagship’ boasts an extra 95hp, weight-saving panels and clever aero. The result is 0-62mph in 3.4 seconds and a 211mph top speed.

A dry weight of 1693kg is hardly ‘super light’ (the rival Ferrari 812 Superfast weighs 1630kg), but the Superleggera is a useful 72kg leaner than a DB11 AMR. Most of that saving comes from carbon fibre: used for the forward-hinging clamshell bonnet, roof and tailgate. The doors, meanwhile, are aluminium and the rear wings are composite. Forged alloy wheels trim vital kilos, too – especially if you choose the Lightweight Twin Spoke option.

Aston Martin DBS: Downforce to spare

The reshaped bodywork also generates a sizeable chunk of downforce with, crucially, no drag penalty. A front splitter directs air into underbody venturis leading to a double diffuser, while the new ‘Aeroblade II’ rear spoiler – a gorgeous sliver of naked carbon fibre – stretches the width of the rear deck. Total downforce is 180kg at VMax, 110kg more than a DB11 and the highest of any series production Aston Martin. That said, an engineer at the launch revealed the forthcoming Valkyrie hypercar will develop “more than a tonne” of downforce, which somewhat puts the DBS in its place.

All the above also matters little if the end-product looks like a pooch’s petit dejeuner. After all, CEO Andy Palmer stated that “Any car we make must be the most beautiful in its class”. The DBS Superleggera is, well, a beauty from some angles, a beast from others. Its silhouette is classic post-DB7-era Aston, but details such as the ‘curlicue’ vents and ‘open stirrups’ in the front wings take inspiration from the Vulcan and Vantage GTE racer. It’s aggressive.

The styling was entrusted to Marek Reichman, who explained “It’s about describing power. Park a DBS next to a DB11 and Vantage, and anyone can tell which car is the most potent. The DB11 has a pleated Savile Row suit, while the DBS wears its shirt slightly too tight. Like Rio Ferdinand, it’s proud of its physique.” Ironically, most footballers seem to prefer Ferraris, but you get the point.

Inside, the DBS looks far more like a regular DB11: sleek and well-made, if a little haphazard ergonomically. The sweeping dashboard gains a new, more angular, instrument binnacle, plus more exposed carbon fibre and the squared-off steering wheel from the Vantage. The gearshift paddles are longer and racier ‘Sports Plus’ seats are standard, trimmed in sumptuous Scottish leather and Alcantara. An oddly Citroën-esque double chevron motif is stitched into the seats and roof lining.

Options to please

As with most six-figure cars, though, this is merely the starting point. Have a word with Aston’s archly-named ‘Q’ division and the only limits are your imagination and bank balance. Would sir like seatbelts in Flint, Champagne, Spicy Red, Mocha or Graphite? How about a carbon steering wheel, or one’s family crest embroidered onto the headrests? Sadly, you can’t upgrade the last-generation Mercedes-Benz media system, which already looks dated – and lags behind what you’d get in a new A-Class.

Not that you’ll care about infotainment when V12 rhapsody is just an ankle-flex away. Still, absolute power corrupts absolutely, so it’s a good thing Matt Becker is involved. Aston’s chief engineer worked at Lotus before being poached by Gaydon in 2015 and is the chassis wizard behind the sensational new Vantage. If anyone can make this car drive well, it’s him.

Unlike its little brother, the DBS doesn’t have a hell-for-leather Track mode. Choose instead from GT, Sport and Sport Plus, with suspension and drivetrain response configured separately via switches on the steering wheel. Adaptive damping is standard, along with a mechanical limited-slip differential (the Vantage uses an electronic ‘E-Diff), while weight distribution is a near-perfect 51:49 – helped by wedging the V12 as far back as possible beneath the scuttle.

“The key number here is 900Nm,” explains Becker with a grin. “That’s 182Nm more than the Ferrari [812 Superfast] and 150Nm more than a One-77.” On the road, it feels like a force of nature, a swell of thunderous thrust on-tap from scarcely above tickover. Yet Becker’s chassis not only copes with such demands, it relishes them. The direct, meaty steering and the way it bites into bends, nuanced and neutral unless provoked with the throttle, is akin to a bigger, brawnier Vantage. “We’ve tuned the handling to engage and reward drivers of all ability levels,” says Becker.

Speaking of ability levels, you can switch the DSC stability control off entirely, but that isn’t something I tried on greasy roads flanked by sheer cliffs. Sport Plus mode permits ‘sportier’ slip angles while still keeping you safe – plus allowing a healthy dose of third-gear wheelspin. Ahem. The standard carbon-ceramic brakes merit a mention, too, hauling the Vantage to a halt with brutal efficiency.

Supple motorway cruiser

As we follow a cascade of waterfalls up another verdant valley, Adolf Hitler’s Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle’s Nest) fortress appears in the distance, perched atop a rocky peak. Excuse the all-too-obvious metaphor, but it feels like a scene from James Bond, the DBS racing towards the villain’s lair. All I need is a Walther PPK and a leggy brunette in the passenger seat – both of which, regrettably, Aston failed to supply.

Even this British bruiser can’t scale the vertical ascent to the Nazi base, though. And besides, we need to bid auf wiedersehen to this Alpine playground and make tracks for the airport. After four hours and a full tank of super unleaded, my time with the DBS Superleggera is almost up.

Switching to GT mode, we settle to a comfortable cruise. Here, on more mundane roads, the Aston’s inner DB11 comes to the fore. Its suspension is supple, its eight-speed gearbox smooth, and its power delivery utterly effortless. It even sounds sedate when you aren’t pressing on, the exhaust baffles muffling any fireworks. This is the stuff Aston Martin has always done well, and it hasn’t forgotten its roots.

Lest we forget, of course, the DBS is a ‘super GT’. The role of ‘super sports car’ will be filled by the 2021 Vanquish, a mid-engined answer to the Ferrari 488 GTB and McLaren 720S. That gives this car a tough brief: to meet the demands of keen drivers and offer long-distance comfort. We would happily have driven it back from the Alps to London – via some autobahns, of course – then carried on to north Wales just for the hell of it. You wouldn’t contemplate that in a Caterham.

Glorious GT and scintillating sports car, the DBS Superleggera is sure-fire success from a revitalised Aston Martin. Roll on the Valkyrie and Vanquish.

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Out goes six-cylinders and rear-wheel drive in favour of BMW’s most powerful four-pot and all-wheel drive. Welcome to the new hot One, the BMW M135i xDrive.

Review taken from Performance BMW. Words: Bob Harper. Photos: BMW.

There have been plenty of moments over the last few years that some of us in the BMW community have found hard to swallow. The loss of the naturally aspirated engine, the gradual demise of the manual gearbox, the increasing use of four-wheel drive and the move to a front-wheel drive platform for its smaller cars. Should we be worried?

The new 1 Series is a case in point. Front-wheel drive, three-pot motors for much of the range and the loss of the sonorous straight-six in the range-topping model. While this might be an issue for those of us interested in vehicle dynamics, the change to front-wheel drive was a no-brainer for BMW. Previous generations of the 1 Series might have been the driver’s choice in the hatchback sector but it simply didn’t match the competition in the interior or luggage space stakes and with the F40 generation BMW has addressed these issues. Research also suggests that the vast majority of buyers simply don’t care which are the driven wheels.

While this is all well and good for the majority of 1 Series sales where does this leave the top dog, the BMW M135i? The M140i was a much-loved and seriously enjoyable back road weapon – can a front-drive-based four-pot version garner the same enthusiasm? The vital stats don’t bode well with the BMW M135i xDrive offering 306hp and 332lb ft of torque – 34hp and 37lb ft less than the M140i. Performance is similar, with the M135i posting a 4.8-second 0-62mph time versus 4.6 seconds for the older car with the eight-speed auto. And that might be a another bone of contention for the M135i – it only comes as an auto and with xDrive four-wheel drive – the outgoing machine could be specced as a manual, and in the UK was rear-drive only.

So much for the on-paper stats, what about in the flesh? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so we won’t say too much about the styling, but to our eyes it’s a relatively generic hatchback shape with a shorter bonnet than before and a set of kidney grilles that only a mother could love. It is appreciably roomier though, especially in the back, and the boot’s now the same size as a Golf and an A3 and 20-litres up on an A-Class.

The interior has a nice ambiance too, and the bespoke sports seats are comfortable and supportive with a mix of cloth and Alcantara upholstery. There’s plenty of kit in the M135i with BMW’s Live Cockpit Professional being standard fitment, which brings widescreen nav, the latest operating system, the digital instrument cluster as seen on higher-end models, and the ability to talk to your
car via the ‘Hey BMW’ function if that’s your thing.

But enough of all that, what’s it like to drive? A four-cylinder, even with a digital sound enhancer, is never going to sound as inspiring as a ’six but BMW does seem to have done a pretty good job, with the M135i sounding suitably raunchy with pops and bangs from the exhaust when you rev it, and once on the open road it’s pretty punchy too. As with many BMWs the driving mode is important – it feels a little lazy in Comfort mode, with the gearbox in particular taking a little longer to drop a cog when you ask for full bore acceleration, but ramp it up to Sport and it takes on a much better persona. Throttle response is improved and the gearbox feels noticeably more alive, although still not as sharp as in the M140i – the M135i can’t use the ZF eight-speeder that works so well in the rest of the range thanks to its transverse engine layout and instead uses a different eight-speeder made by Aisin.

There’s no getting away from the M135i’s cross-country pace, though, and while the vital stats might just favour the M140i there would be very little in it on a demanding back road. While the swap to all-wheel drive might not be the purists’ preference, or the choice of those who enjoy a sideways cornering attitude, its grip is phenomenal and even in streaming wet conditions it’ll transmit all 300 horses to the road surface without any drama. At the limit there might be the slightest grabbing feeling through the steering as it scrabbles for grip, but the standard fit limited-slip differential on the front axle and BMW’s new (for combustion engine cars, it’s been used before on the i3) ARB tech, which brakes the inside wheels when cornering to mitigate against understeer, work really well. And talking of brakes, the standard-fit M Sport stoppers do haul it up impressively and inspire confidence.

Ultimately, it’s perhaps not quite as entertaining as the M140i, but on a wet back road chances are it’ll be a hell of a lot quicker. The M135i does feel a little different to a normal BMW xDrive offering, though, as it can only send a maximum of 50% of its power to the rear wheels whereas in the bigger models up to 100% can be directed rearward. It’ll cover the ground quickly, but the overriding impression is of a very quick front-wheel drive machine that’s getting some assistance from the rear rather than the other way round.

Downsides? The interior is perhaps a little busy – there are a huge number of different trim textures and finishes in there and the gear lever is too short, especially when you want to rapidly knock it over to the left to engage the gearbox’s Sport or manual mode. Our car had the optional dampers which felt good in all modes and at £500 aren’t too expensive either, although they can’t be paired with the optional 19” rims for some reason.

If you’re after a seriously rapid hatch that’s supremely surefooted and still an engaging drive the BMW M135i xDrive could well be the machine for you. Is it better than before? Perhaps, perhaps not, but it offers a very different skill set and is none the worse for it.

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When McLaren decided to build a hypercar, the aim was high, the challenges – including making it road legal – were prodigious. Then the company raised the bar even further, naming it the McLaren Senna after one of the most uncompromising, controversial and spectacularly fast race drivers who ever lived. Now that calls for both arrogance and supreme confidence. Ayrton Senna would have approved.

Review taken from Ultimate Supercar. Words: Richard Aucock. 

When they saw the famous yellow helmet in their rear-view mirrors, other drivers reportedly would take heed. Ayrton Senna didn’t need blue flags. One look at him, and you just knew. The McLaren Senna is like that, too. Just one look tells you this thing means business.

Ironically, when it was revealed, after being debuted at McLaren’s Christmas party for owners, there was a mini meltdown over the car’s styling. This was not your conventional hypercar beauty, McLaren appeared to have given us a racing car with number plates, designed for one of those occasional times when the regulations seem to encourage ugly cars (2014 F1, anyone?).

Yet here we are at Portugal’s Estoril race circuit, standing and staring at a remarkable line-up of McLaren Sennas in the pitlane, and ugliness is the last thing on our mind. It may not be a conventional beauty, but that doesn’t stop it looking incredible. Right now, there is no more purposeful road car on the planet.

Why Portugal? Because it was the scene of Senna’s first F1 victory, way back in 1985 (yes, it was in a Lotus, explaining the lack of pictures posted around the racetrack, but fair play to McLaren Automotive for still being willing to make the link). Estoril doesn’t seem to have changed much since then – there’s none of the sophistication you get at Silverstone – but we’re not here to go sightseeing. We’re here to be among the first people in the world to drive the showroom-ready McLaren Senna.

Five hundred of them will make their way to customers, and each costs £750,000. The Senna is billed as the world’s most awesome track-day machine, a hypercar to slay things such as the Ferrari FXX range, Aston Martin Vulcan and Lamborghini Sesto Elemento. But unlike them, or indeed the upcoming Brabham BT62, the Senna can be driven to and from the track. It’s road-legal. And this is a fact McLaren is inordinately proud of.

McLaren Senna: This is a road car

Project manager Ian Howshall runs me through just what an achievement this has been. Designing the body so that it passes all relevant worldwide pedestrian safety regulations, for example. Making sure it meets all necessary fuel economy and emissions laws. Even simple things like getting the interior ergonomics spot-on, or making sure the front nose lift function would be able to deal with speed bumps. McLaren could have cut corners and made the Senna track-only, but it didn’t.

And the “high proportion” of owners who will drive it to track days will appreciate this, added Howshall. He expects lots of buyers to take advantage of not needing a trailer and use their Senna more frequently on the circuit than they might have done otherwise. Our circuit time was approaching, too. But first, the briefings.

The previous night, we’d had dinner with the McLaren execs, who reminded us about the ‘three 800s’: that’s 800hp, 800Nm of torque (519lb ft) and 800kg of downforce at 155mph. The latter is the most remarkable, particularly as that’s why the Senna looks how it does. It was essentially designed around its aerodynamic demands first and styling then drawn on top. Any swipes of the pen that compromised aerodynamics were not allowed. They don’t worry about making people weak at the knees with beauty on the racetrack; this time, the same applied for road cars.

In the pitlane the next day, Ian shows me some of the details in more depth. Starting with the Senna’s incredible rear wing. It’s massive, like a racing car, but even better than a racer’s, it’s adaptive, constantly altering its profile when on the move to maximise and balance downforce. The 800kg peak is one chosen by McLaren, says Ian: it could generate even more, but 800kg gives the best balance. Thus, when you hit 155mph, it starts to peel off downforce to maintain this rather than increase it.

Yes, the McLaren Senna produces downforce to spare.

The wing’s amazingly light too, he says: less than 5kg. Other ultra-lightweight components help make this the lightest McLaren since the original F1, which is why it can accelerate from zero to 124mph in 6.8 seconds, and then go back to zero in 100 metres. Oh, and the carbon ceramic brakes are so powerful, McLaren had to design all-new calipers. The original ones were twisting under the loads generated.

McLaren being McLaren, I had an allotted time to begin my track drives at Estoril. A lady came over and told me it was time to change into my overalls (McLaren-branded, waiting in a locker with my name on it – all about the details). Notepad away, on with the race suit, and into… a McLaren 720S, laid on to help us familiarise ourselves with the course and warm ourselves up. Yes, a supercar was, for today only, a ‘warm-up car’. It’s like learning to play football by running out for a Premier League game.

My instructor for the day was charming racer Jamie Wall. He talked me around Estoril in the 720S, then it was back to the pits for a breather, before heading out in the Senna. Which left just enough time for the nerves to boil nicely. The 720S felt mighty fast enough. What on earth would the McLaren Senna be like? At last, it was time to find out.

This is a track car

Like all McLarens, the Senna has dihedral doors. Open them, and the tread of the front tyre is exposed. It’s a cool touch. Much of the roof opens up too, making getting in a matter of walking forwards then carefully lowering yourself into the stiff-shell bucket seats. A man buckles the four-point harness, then closes the door for me (I’m in so tight, I can’t reach it). He does the same to Jamie, meaning I’m sat in silence for a few seconds, surveying the button-light interior, the McLaren-trademark superb front visibility, the fact I feel I’m sat in a road car that could take on Le Mans.

Finally, Jamie’s intercom is connected and I hear his reassuring words again. “Ready?” The starter for a Senna is mounted on the roof console, along with the electric window controls and drive mode buttons. “People will be driving it with a helmet on,” Ian would later explain. “This has a restricted field of vision, so they won’t easily be able to look down.” McLaren’s thus raised stuff up to help in the heat of the moment. It also feels very cool to reach up to the roof to start it.

The rawer, more menacing noise from the 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 felt immediately more purposeful. So too the extra vibrations: there’s less comfort-focused sanitisation going on here. As we rumble down the pitlane, the setup feels tauter, jigglier, more track-ready. Exploding onto the circuit for the first time, all howling roar from the engine and ridiculously powerful acceleration, was mind-warping. Thank goodness our warm-up car had 720hp.

Thing is, with Jamie’s guidance, I’m quickly able to start taking it all in, and it soon starts to feel other-worldly. That’s because of the focus, the attitude, the uncompromising track orientation, but also because of something you only generally feel in racing cars: downforce. After a few laps, my confidence starts to build further, so I take corners faster, and better, on the correct line and in the correct gear. And the Senna starts to feel transcendental.

It’s addictive, the joyous sensation of serious downforce, once you experience it. You simply want more – and you can have more, if you go faster, drive better. You’re travelling at insane speeds, yet the car feels sucked down and planted to the tarmac, without a trace of flighty nervousness, taking every last bit of squidge away and, of course, pressing the wheels hard into the ground, so the feedback and feel you get from the tyres is off the scale.

It’s sublime. And the Senna’s still working hard to stay on your side as downforce peels off under braking. The rear wing turns into an airbrake, then alters its profile on corner turn-on to stabilise the rear and help it pirouette into the bend with the grace and precision of an Olympic ice skater. Get early on the power to neutralise the balance, then drive out and quickly gather up the speed again to get your hit of downforce.

Ludicrously powerful

This is not quite the most stupendous part of how the Senna drives, though. The brakes are. They are ludicrously powerful – genuinely, like racing car brakes, that let you stamp on them as hard as you dare and yet still pull up short.

Jamie had me braking later and later, to the point of feeling genuine terror the split-second before I kicked the pedal to the floor. Which dispersed as quickly as it rose, once I realised I was once again pulling up short. And the carbon-ceramic anchors are so tireless, you can do this time and again without feeling a trace of fade (advanced materials mean they run 150 degrees C cooler than normal ceramics).

It was time to cool down and head back in. There would be another run later, but McLaren felt it wise to give us chance to digest things first. Out came the notepad for a download. My hand’s shaking, and it wasn’t after the 720S.

Compared to that, compared to a ‘normal’ supercar, the Senna has amazed in how step-beyond its abilities are, how quickly it accelerates, and corners, and particularly slows down, but most of all, how it gives laymen like me even more confidence and reassurance out on-track. I’m already musing on how to argue that £750,000 is a bargain. The Senna feels a million-pound machine or more.

The next session is glorious. Physically, it’s even more demanding, because I sort of know what I’m doing, so can start dialling up the G-forces the McLaren Senna’s capable of (2G under braking is particularly epic). With confidence comes the willingness to try a few things too, like seeing how early in the corner you can get on the power, and thankfully then catching the slide with a positive dab of opposite lock. Then, because of this, feeling enthused to chuck the Senna about in the lower-speed stuff, to see how a hypercar can also feel like a kart.

And then, on the final run down the pit straight, braking absolutely as late as possible, to see how the terror of running out of road transitions into the joy of judging braking spot-on, and rolling into the corner on the anchors with what, to me, seemed like perfection. Time to head back to the pits. The boy’s getting brave in the fully-sold-out £750k McLaren.

It’s amazingly light and airy in there, with the huge windscreen and panels in the tops of the doors letting light flood in. This one has the optional clear-glazed panels in the doors too, which I hadn’t really noticed as my mind was elsewhere, but which Jamie insisted were, with experience, useful. “The offside one is great for helping you hit corners with amazing accuracy.” Not that this car’s namesake would need any help here.

There’s never been a driver with quite the presence and aura of Ayrton Senna. Not even Michael Schumacher quite had the mystique of the famous Brazilian. So, naming a car after him was risky. After all, they made a special edition Fiat Seicento Sporting named after Schumacher, so it’s a trend not rich with successes.

McLaren’s done it, though. It’s created an outstanding car that’s a huge step on from even its latest quite remarkable supercar: the 720S. It’s like making the move from GP2 into F1 – the basics are the same, but the limits and abilities are wildly higher. Like Senna on-track, best not get in its way.

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