Aston Martin DBS 770 Ultimate 2023-2024 review
10
Last-of-the-line DBS is a stunning swansong for Gaydon’s full-fat grand-touring coupé
Published:
19 March 2025
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The Aston Martin DBS 770 Ultimate is what you would get if you plied the Toyota GR86 with anabolic steroids and then packed it off to the same finishing school as the BMW M5. All of which is to say that it’s mind-blowingly good.
It’s a super collectible and alluring run-out special for the wonderful Aston Martin DBS. Only 300 coupés and 199 Volante convertibles were ever made.
It has 12-pot fireworks, an artfully sculpted bonnet and extraterrestrial-looking carbonfibre seats.
But its raison d’être is about holistic dynamic improvements, rather than simply being an end-of-the-line farewell with all the bells and whistles or gathering dust in some collector’s hermetically sealed garage.
https://www.drivenbuy.co.uk/autocar?car_make=aston-martin&car_model=dbs-770-ultimate-2023-2024&review=used&source=https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/aston-martin/dbs-770-ultimate-2023-2024
Verdict
Model tested:
Rating: 10
Used Aston Martin DBS 770 Ultimate 2023-2024 review
So brilliant it makes you wish the regular DBS was born this way
Good
Glides along B-roads
Supremely accurate steering
Torque curve avoids wheelspin
Bad
Sold out
Interior is tiny: two adults can barely sit next to each other
DESIGN & STYLING
Pros
Stunning proportions
Cons
Lots of carbonfibre to damage
None of the visual modifications over the regular DBS are what you would call major.
On the outside, it gets 21in alloy wheels inspired by those of the one-off Victor, a ‘horseshoe’ bonnet vent and a larger rear diffuser.
The engine breathes a little easier and turns out 759bhp (compared with the DBS’s 715bhp) and there are significant changes to the engine calibration and torque shaping too.
The springs are carried over from the regular DBS but the damping has been retuned for closer control.
A new crossbrace and a thickened crossmember beneath the engine have lifted front stiffness by a quarter, while ‘increased engineering’ of a sheer panel has improved matters at the back.
The benefit is that damper performance immediately improves, even before you refine and perfect the rates.
INTERIOR
Pros
Sublime fit and finish
Cons
Impractical, especially considering the size
It’s virtually unchanged from the DBS in here, except for the seats, which have carbonfibre bolsters. They’re comfortable enough but are tricky to get in and out of.
Material quality is broadly good, but there’s not very much space and ergonomically it’s a bit of a mess. The touchscreen infotainment is nowhere near as touch-sensitive as you would like, the transmission buttons are confusing, there’s nowhere for the key to go and the view out is letterbox-like.
The rear seats are large but don’t really offer enough space for full-sized humans, so they’re realistically relegated to just taking luggage.
ENGINES & PERFORMANCE
Pros
Laugh-out-loud in-gear performance
Huge torque without wheelspin
Cons
Could do more aurally
How Aston went about delivering the 770 Ultimate is interesting, particularly for anyone who expected this last-of-the-line DBS to amount to some fancy wheels and more boost for the twin-turbocharged 5.2-litre V12.
Of course, power is absolutely part of the equation here. With 759bhp, the 770 Ultimate is 44bhp stronger than the regular DBS and was at the time the most powerful series-production Aston ever made.
Performance will easily leave you laughing out loud and passengers praying out loud.
Torque is the same, because ZF’s eight-speed automatic transmission can’t reliably take much more before it threatens to ingest itself, but that 664lb ft total is still enough to send the 1770kg 770 Ultimate to 62mph in 3.2sec.
No changes have been made to the mechanical limited-slip differential at the back, and it behaves as dependably as ever, but the throttle mapping and “torque shaping” of the engine delivery have been carefully reconsidered.
In gears one to four and only at below 4000rpm, the DBS now unfurls its mammoth torque in a way that avoids splurts of wheelspin when you don’t want them.
This sounds contrived and even a little frustrating, but the reality is a 759bhp, 664lb ft super-GT that you can more easily bully and lay into and that still adopts slivers of oversteers with supreme ease.
RIDE & HANDLING
Pros
Chassis wrinkles out the worst of what British roads can throw at it
As adjustable as much lighter, slower cars
Cons
Occasionally too much feedback through the steering wheel
On an improvised test route through the Cotswolds, time and again up crops the sort of corner that illustrates how surprisingly evolved the 770 Ultimate is from the regular DBS.
Said corner lurks on snaking, quick, fairly narrow B-roads and is taken in second or third gear. It’s smooth on the inside but corrugated on the hedge-lined outside – especially on the exit, where you also find dust, mud or, just for fun, standing water.
The 770 Ultimate’s adjustability and forgivingness, like many great cars, makes a hero of the driver.
We’ve all taken this corner a million times, and it’s one the regular DBS would get through without much difficulty but also, it must be said, without much panache.
On the way in, you would lack the confidence needed to fully run the car’s endless nose up against the edge of the road.
Blame that hint of imprecision in the steering and general lack of transparency in the GT-flavoured chassis. Mid-corner, the most imperious Aston of the modern era would then take just a fraction too long to settle down and ready itself for the exit, during which the back axle would squat and bob chaotically as the V12 flared up, unapologetic while doling out all too generous slabs of its 664lb ft torque potential.
The 770 Ultimate is different, so subtly but meaningfully that it feels a bit miraculous.
It cuts into these tricky kinds of corners cleanly, settles almost immediately, then on the way out its revised chassis essentially pulls the wrinkles out of the road, inspiring you to get very greedy indeed with the throttle pedal. And it does all of this while in general riding more effortlessly and gently than the regular car everywhere you go.
Aside from ride, the 770 Ultimate’s enhanced stiffness is most obvious during turn-in. With the regular DBS, there’s a faint call-and-response effect as you guide the steering wheel and then, after a delay, the nose starts to swing.
It’s just a whisper of hesitation but it’s there – and it isn’t in this car. What has helped in this regard is that Aston has removed a rubber damper from the steering column. Yet here again, paradoxically, steering feel and accuracy have improved. But so seemingly has the DBS’s occasional habit of sending road shocks up the rack.
Simon Newton, Aston’s head of vehicle engineering, reckons this is more to do with the revised damping, but whatever the reason, it feeds into the 770 Ultimate’s tactile and alert yet smooth and consistent manner.
Where things get clever – and where Aston has shown an uncanny level of awareness – is how this heightened control and pliancy in the chassis is blended into what the car’s almighty powertrain is doing.
What you don’t get, if the road is uneven or you ask for more torque than the 305-section rear Pirellis can cope with, is an immediate, flow-sapping rendezvous with the traction control system – or, if all the systems are off, an unexpected armful of opposite lock.
Instead, you can properly exploit the V12 while enjoying the sweetest ride and handling compromise since the excellent V8 DB11 of 2018 (the first Aston overseen by Matt Becker, son of Lotus legend Roger and now chief engineer at JLR).
There are other fine-tuning elements that were parsed into the DBS recipe during the 770 Ultimate’s 18-month gestation. The torque interruption during gearshifts is shorter yet transmission ‘double-bump’ has also been eradicated, so the car swaps cogs faster but now pulls out of T-junctions with seamless ease and none of the shunt that you sometimes get with the regular car.
Anyone familiar with the DBS couldn’t fail to notice the easier drivability this brings, just as they would better enjoy the 770 Ultimate’s more concentrated, accurate steering and iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove gait, which is just as appreciable at 20mph as at 120mph.
VERDICT
Verdict
Model tested:
Rating: 10
Used Aston Martin DBS 770 Ultimate 2023-2024 review
So brilliant it makes you wish the regular DBS was born this way
Good
Glides along B-roads
Supremely accurate steering
Torque curve avoids wheelspin
Bad
Sold out
Interior is tiny: two adults can barely sit next to each other
So what we have here is probably the finest Aston of the modern era. One that’s not much less usable than, say, the Porsche 911 Turbo, yet has a sense of occasion any Ferrari or Bentley would be proud to have and is so dynamically proficient that you could happily hammer one a thousand motorway miles then have your jaw dropped on a tatty country road at the other end.
The 770 Ultimate’s breadth really is something. As Newton puts it: “We don’t just want to put big engines in cars and make hot rods.” Quite an understatement. And quite a car.
