Aston Martin DB11 Volante review

The DB11 V8 is a confident sporting car, and it makes you feel confident. At least it does if the road is broad enough for the DB11's extravagant width.

(That's worth saying at the outset because the early DB11 V12 is not so well resolved. Its front end steers too grabbily, its rear end rolls too softly, so there's less precision than you want, and that's before we come to the jittery traction issues. Aston engineers candidly agree with this assessment, and in spring 2018 the V12 Coupé gets a suspension setup closer to the V8's.)

By the way, if you drive the Volante with its roof up, it feels like a hard-roofed car. There's little shuddering, and the wind noise isn't grim. Tyre noise gets overbearing on some road surfaces, but that's no different from the DB11 Coupé. OK, the rear window is a bit small, but not so you feel blinkered, and the over-shoulder vision is still useful.

Drive it with the roof down and the body remains rigid so the steering and ride don't change.

Meanwhile with clear air over your head, the road noise is carried away with the breeze, replaced by an welcome extra dose of exhaust woofle.

When the road opens up ahead, you find the woofle is taking on a surprisingly hard edge. That's because the V8 is doing huge work in it's mid-rev region, doling out up to 498lb ft. It's extremely rare to find a turbo engine that feels so literally and metaphorically unforced as this one: it's a natural, free, exuberant mechanical spirit.

Because it's so amazingly free of lag, you can relax, shift up early and still get the job done. If it's wet you'll want to short-shift like this, because otherwise you'll overwhelm the back tyres and have the traction light flashing pointlessly.

Dig down into the throttle travel, get the revs up, and it's seriously fast. But for a 510bhp sportscar, not shatteringly so. That's the effect of its mass. But does it need to shatter you as a straight-line catapult? Probably not: this car has many more layers and textures than a simple speed rocket.

As with the V8 Coupé, the Volante has recalibrated steering and rear suspension. Result is that just off-centre the steering weight builds progressively and the car turns more smoothly. Build up the efforts and it remains graceful and composed yet – given its mass – remarkably urgent and responsive.

Chassis modes and powertrain modes have separate buttons. The extra powertrain anger is mostly just theatre. The chassis sport-mode calls up a tauter damper programme and looser stability-electronics thresholds when conditions and your mood call for that.

And yet amid all this, it's also got a suppleness to its ride that means you wouldn't be shaken up whether taking it across a bumpy city or a whole continent.

That said, for long-haul work the DB11 still has some flaws. Tyre noise for one. Also, for travelling in France or anywhere where there are average-speed cameras, the lack of radar cruise control is a bit of a facepalm.