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Bloomberg
This week at dual events in Los Angeles and Beijing, Aston Martin unveiled the first SUV in its 106-year history.
The $189,000 DBX, one of the last luxury-brand SUV models to hit the market, jumps into a race of automakers intending to capitalise on buyers’ seemingly endless appetite for powerful and expensive SUVs, especially in China and the US. It will compete against Bentley’s $165,000 Bentayga and Rolls-Royce’s $325,000 Cullinan on the high-end side; on the sportier side, Lamborghini’s $200,000 Urus and Porsche’s $126,500 Cayenne Turbo.
DBX sits square in the middle of this set with a 542-horsepower, twin-turbocharged V-8 engine borrowed from the handsome DB11 coupe. It gets 516 pound-feet of torque and will go zero to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds, with a top speed of 181 mph. That beats some of the competition but not all: It’s faster than the massive Cullinan, though not as quick as the sexy Urus, which can reach 60 mph in three seconds.
Crunch Time
The DBX comes at a critical time for the Gaydon, England-based brand, whose shares are down 60% in 2019 amid a challenging sales environment and Britain’s Brexit woes. In September it secured $150 million in new financing at a high 12% interest rate; it can bring in an additional $100m if it records 1,400 DBX orders within 9 months of first payout.