When most people think of Aston Martin, they think of James Bond in a sleek silver sports car zipping through the tight and winding streets of an international city in pursuit of a bad guy. While that’s certainly part of the luxury automaker’s mythology, the modern Aston Martin Lagonda (the corporate name) is about much more than how to make a martini (shaken, not stirred), and the company has managed to broaden its high-end appeal thanks to a popular SUV known as the DBX.
Aston Martin DBX707, a five-seat performance SUV launched a little more than three years ago, was recently updated, and Observer traveled to Napa, Calif. earlier this month to get a taste of the impressive 687-horsepower beast. After spending the afternoon wheeling a bright orange 2025 Aston Martin DBX707 along the Pacific Coast Highway and winding roads through gorgeous wineries, it’s easy to see why the well-heeled are flocking to the car. The DBX707 offers a sports car experience in an SUV package, complete with leather appointments, raucous exhaust notes and handling to match, all at a starting price of $249,000.
Other specs include a 3.1 second 0-60 mph acceleration, an infotainment system that’s much more user-friendly than the previous generation, a newly designed interior that’s more ergonomically friendly, and a number of software-based chassis enhancements to make the already quick vehicle more nimble on the road.
In the three and a half years since its launch, DBX has become a “conquest car,” a vehicle that brings new buyers—younger and predominantly female—to the brand and shifts its customer demographics, said Alex Long, the director of product and market strategy at Aston Martin. According to sales numbers in 2021, the first full year when the DBX was on sale, half of the SUV’s buyers were new to the brand.
“For a brand that’s 111 years old and has only spent three of those years selling SUVs, it is a step into the unknown in terms of what sort of audience is going to step into this marketplace,” Long told Observer. “It’s brought an audience that has come to Aston Martin to buy their daily car, and then from there, they’re considering more of our sports cars and building a garage of Aston Martin’s and joining the family in that sense.”
Long noted that women are more likely to buy the DBX than other Astons, and, once those women get into the powerful SUV, they’re moving further into the brand and looking at adding Aston Martin sports cars to their garages “because they get familiarity with the drive, the technology, the approachability, etc.” Long said.
Performance SUV is a counterforce to the sports car market’s volatility.
Aston has made only sports cars for the last 100 years of its history and is one of the few well-known, independent automakers still in operation. (Aston Martin has been owned by Ford and Geely in the past. Geely still has a stake in them currently, but a majority stake is held by the billionaire Lawrence Stroll.) Bringing an SUV to the market for the small company has helped smooth out the boom-and-bust cycles common to the sports car market, according to Long.
“Aston, in its history, has been prone to the life cycles of its key sports cars,” he said. “There are a good couple of years, followed by a period of managed decline, followed by flat, then a new car and a boom again, and I think what DBX does is ends that kind of cycle.”
Porsche was the first automaker to pioneer the idea of building a performance SUV to offset the volatility of the sports car market. Porsche launched the highly profitable Cayenne SUV 20 years ago. While sports car enthusiasts wrang their hands about the move, it’s proven to work for Porsche and other high-end luxury automakers. Today, nearly every luxury automaker (perhaps with the notable exception of McLaren), including Bentley, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini, and Ferrari, offers a performance SUV.
“Not only are you establishing yourself as a brand in the segment, but the segment itself is drawing people in from other segments,” Long said about the strategy. “Fewer people are making luxury sedans, and so the sedan audience is coming into the luxury SUV space. Fewer people are buying other types of high-performance or expensive cars and are coming into the luxury SUV segment because, actually, it’s ticking a lot of boxes.”
