The Aston Martin DBX707 Is an SUV-Shaped Supercar

The monochrome orange glow of street lights fills the cabin as my lover and I wait to enter the West Seattle bridge. When the light turns green, I gently pull my hand from hers and grip the leather-wrapped wheel tightly. Aimed at the onramp with the throttle matted, the 4.0-liter V-8's baritone voice soars, filling the Aston’s cockpit until it’s rudely interrupted by the staccato bark of a violent upshift at 7,000 rpm. In three seconds, we’re at merging speed. Three more seconds and the speedo reads triple digits. 

In a blink, we’re at our exit. The six-piston calipers bite hard into the 16.5-inch carbon ceramic rotors as my passenger makes a little squeak of a giggle and scrambles for the leather grab handle, and I pitch the Aston at the apex of the off-ramp, tires thumping the Bott’s Dots like curbing. A short jaunt through the sleeping city, and we’re home, and not a moment too soon. My beautiful passenger looks over at me with anticipation.

It’s time for us to unload all the groceries from Costco.

Every high-end supercar manufacturer who swore they’d never make an SUV now makes an SUV, so the DBX was no real surprise. It’s even less surprising that in the four years since its debut, it’s become Aston’s best-seller, outselling every other model combined. That success has not been for a lack of competition, as we live in the best era in human history to be an ungodly wealthy SUV shopper: Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and Audi will all sell you a roughly $200,000 SUV that hits 60 in the neighborhood of three seconds. 

The DBX had the title of "most beautiful" locked down the minute it was introduced. Its front end is stereotypically Aston Martin and defined by its trademark mustache grille, but the rear—with its flared haunches flowing into a wagon-like C-pillar, all tied together with Aston’s signature heckblende—is one of the most beautiful of any SUV sold, ever. Its silhouette in profile is more shooting brake than sport utility. Aston knows how to build a car with sex appeal, and its first stab at an SUV is no different. 

Still, what the original DBX had in beauty it lacked in speed, with a doddering four-second sprint to