DB11 Volante « Aston Martins.com

DB11 Volante

(2018 - date)

After teasing potential customers with photos of a heavily disguised prototype during 2017, Aston Martin unveiled the DB11 Volante in October 2018 and launched it fully at a press event during February 2018. Fortunately they chose the South of France where the winter weather is quite kind and it allowed journalists to test the Volante in a comfortable climate both roof up and down. First thing to note is that the DB11 Volante was launched as a V8 only and I was told there are no plans for a V12 version. If customers want a convertible V12, the only option is to buy the hugely more expensive DBS Superleggera Volante.

DB11 Volante

With any open car based on a coupe, in order to compensate for the loss of rigidity from the roof structure, the sills were stiffened by increasing the thickness of the metal’s wall thickness. Also 45% more rigid brushed were used on the rear subframe and a cross-member known as the ‘garden gate’ is attached to the cast suspension mounts ahead of the engine. Taking into account the torsional rigidity of the coupe is 34kN/deg, the Volante drops to 22kN/deg. This might not sound good but it compares very favourably to the DB9 Volante which was 14.4kN/deg. The extra weight of the Volante over the DB11 V8 coupe is 110kg but it is roughly equal to the DB11 V12 at 1870kg. Also worth noting is the DB11 Volante is overall 26kg lighter than the DB9 Volante

Powered by the Mercedes-AMG 4.0 litre twin-turbo V8 engine (as also used in the AM6 Vantage) giving 503bhp; this is attached to a ZF 8 speed automatic gearbox. Thus the top speed of the Volante is 187mph and the dash to 62mph takes only 4.1 seconds. Very impressive for a 2+2 convertible GT.

The hood, made up of eight layers operates at headwinds of upto 31mph and takes 14 seconds to open roof, 16 seconds to close roof. It’s a completely new design K-fold system that disappears totally into the body that takes up part of the boot space when retracted. But when raised, the 206 litres of boot space as 20% greater than the outgoing DB9 Volante.

The first public view of the Volante was at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. The UK price at launch was £159,900 although most cars were spec’ed with masses of desirable optional extras and personalisation, all of which pushed the price up. Deliveries of the 2019MY cars began in the Spring of 2018. The DB11 Volante was discontinued in the summer of 2023 and the car was relaced in the range by the DB12 Volante.