The 6.0-litre V12 is a wonderful motor, with great looks to boot. It looks good on paper too. Take 420bhp at 6000rpm and 400lb ft of torque at 5000rpm, for starters.
Then there’s the transmission. The manual car we tested is fitted with a Tremec six-speed gearbox that’s also used in the Corvette and Viper (a five-speed automatic gearbox, as used in the BMW 750i is also available). The difference is that Aston Martin has fitted the transmission with closer ratios that match the engine perfectly.
The changes to the exterior of the car are subtle, but they add to the standard DB7 rather than take it away. The sills are more pronounced, the grille is now filled with horizontal bars, and the driving lamps and indicators have been combined. Under the skin there are more improvements: the area around the bulkhead and transmission tunnel have been made much stiffer in order to give more rigidity. The upper and lower front wishbones are new, as is a vertical link. At the rear an additional link has been fitted to cope with the extra torque. To finish off, stiffer springs front and rear are wrapped around new gas-filled Bilstein dampers.