Aston Martin Chasing Porsche Cayenne Turbo And BMW X6 M With DBX

The Aston Martin DBX will be the British manufacturer’s first crack at the SUV market but it’s confident it will deliver an exceptional product.

While sitting down with Motoring at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed, Aston Martin chief engineer Matt Becker and creative boss Marek Reichman said the British marque is targeting the very best SUVs on the market.

“The one we focused heavily on is the Cayenne Turbo, and we want to be above that,” Reichman said. “We’ve gone for something that is dynamically better than a Cayenne, sounds better than a Cayenne. We need to make the car drive like it looks. We also had a BMW X6 M which we used for some handling targets.”

Becker previously worked for Lotus and said that when Aston Martin started its SUV program, it sampled current SUVs with the aim of replicating their versatility and desirability in all manner of conditions.

Also Watch: Aston Martin DBX Prototype Roars For The First Time In Public

“We took a bunch of SUVs to the Nurburging, but we didn’t just drive them around the track. We drove them at 300km/h on the Autobahn and across a field, and on public roads,” Becker said. “The thing that shocked me was the range of capabilities of these cars. We took the learning from that and looked to translate the way the DB11 drives, and translate that to an SUV.”

As the the DBX is based on a bespoke platform, the company didn’t have to borrow the underpinnings of an existing vehicle and modify it to suit an SUV, like other manufacturers. Becker says this has given Aston Martin a clear advantage over the competition.

“There are many systems on the car that allow us to tune the dynamics of the vehicle. The systems underneath are different to a sports car [but] I won’t go into the details.”

The Aston Martin DBX will be unveiled later this year, likely at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September or the Los Angeles Auto Show in November.