In the luxury grand touring space, it's hard to get much better than the likes of Bentley and Aston Martin. While one could argue that Ferrari should in this contingent, the reality is that those vehicles are on another planet. Those are far more sporting and feature far more embedded race-bred engineering.
Astons and Bentley are more about the experience and the luxe drive.
While the British contingent has been falling behind with aging designs and dated technology, Aston has something all-new its bringing into the picture. That would be the next-gen DB11. And, boy, it looks staggering. At least to me.
But one of the biggest questions is how does the all-new Aston fair out against the the likes of one of the strongest grand tourers to come to market? The verdict reads as such:
But can it cruise as well the Bentley? Yes and no. The DB11 has the best ride quality of any car of this kind I can recall, and it’s quiet enough for a 500-mile day to be relished rather than endured. The Bentley is probably a little quieter, and although its ride is much improved over that of early versions, it’s not as deft as the Aston’s. But you do feel impregnable inside the Bentley, on board one of the best-built cars on earth. There’s probably not a car out there in which you’d feel much safer or more secure than the Conti, and for all its talents, the Aston can’t do this. Even allowing for this DB11’s pre-production status and therefore forgiving the dashboard squeak and wind rustle that stalked us from start to finish, it feels assembled from components like a normal car, not hewn from solid like the Bentley.
That’s not going to snatch victory from the Aston’s jaws here, though. The truth is that against a car designed just after the turn of the century, nothing less than a convincing win for the DB11 would suffice here, and that is what has been achieved. It’s not a rout, because the Continental GT Speed remains a class act, despite its weight, ageing telematics and the ongoing awkward fact that the cheaper V8 S is a far better, more engaging car to drive.
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