Aston Martin DBS Touchtronic 2--A Bonding experience
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
provided by
Unlike everyone else who's ever written about an Aston Martin, we promise to get through this DBS review without mentioning James Bond.
Oops.
Content Continues Below
OK, forget it. Suffice it to say that the DBS that Bond, James Bond, drove in Quantum of Solace--while sporting the same 510-hp V12 as our car--did not have this fine new automatic transmission. The man who is licensed to kill had to shift gears manually, while we, licensed only to irritate, got to use the new Touchtronic 2 six-speed automatic.
Touchtronic 2 is a beefed-up version of the ZF tranny found in the DB9, the 470-hp V12-powered Aston one model down from the DBS in the Aston hierarchy. The final drive has been shortened from 3.15:1 to 3.46:1, which, along with the extra power and a recalibrated shift map, lowers the car's 0-to-62-mph time by half a second, from 4.8 to 4.3 seconds. The 4.3 is the same as for the manual six-speed.
The new transmission operates via big, silly push buttons on the center console, with D being farthest from the driver of our left-hand-drive car. Even the big pop-up shifter knob of the Jaguar XF, or the J-gates on all of those earlier Jags, is more ergonomic than this. Punch the D, and the car is in drive mode--powerful but not, initially, as exciting as we expected, more like a GT than a sports car.
But if you pull back on either of the paddle shifts, you instantly get more control. Pushing the console-mounted sport button for the transmission quickens shifts and throttle response. The sport button for the electronic suspension really gets you flying.
© 2009 AutoWeek.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
|
|