2024 Aston Martin DBX707 review: pacy SUV is finally complete

It always felt a bit like making Usain Bolt run the 100m in Doc Martens. Here was something superior to anything else out there, yet which was being held back and denied its rightful place at the head of the crowd by some dreadful impediment over which it had no control. I refer, of course, to the interior of the Aston Martin DBX.

It was such a shame, for here was tiny Aston Martin doing the apparently impossible: making a new car on a new platform in a new factory and creating what is widely regarded as the best high-performance luxury SUV of them all, only for it to be hobbled by a Human Machine Interface that might have looked OK in a diesel Mercedes C-Class a decade or so back, but which had no place in a car like this.

Now the DBX has the same homegrown HMI that made its debut in the DB12. It looks beautiful and works well, even if the screen is too small and CarPlay graphics harder to read than they should be. Aston has also taken the opportunity to ditch the standard 542bhp offering which everyone stopped buying anyway the moment the DBX707 (a name allowed by Boeing on condition it’s never spelt DBX 707) became available.

It is as fast as ever, but the moment you fire up that motor you are struck by how considered it is. This is a quiet, comfortable and civilised SUV, which just happens to go like hell and handle like a dream. And now, and at last, it finally feels complete.

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Aston Martin DBX707

• Price £205,000
• Engine 4 litres, eight cylinders, petrol, twin turbocharged
• Power 696bhp at 6000rpm
• Torque 663lb ft at 4500rpm
• Weight 2245kg
• Transmission Nine-speed automatic, four-wheel drive
• 0-60mph 3.3sec
• Top speed 193mph
• Economy 19.9mpg (WLTP)
• CO2 323g/km (WLTP)
• Verdict The finest SUV? Possibly.