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Aston Martin has debuted its DBX SUV in the U.S. at the Aston Martin Residences in Miami.
The 65-story, sail-shaped tower holds 391 apartments, priced from $970,000 to $50 million, with completion scheduled for 2022.
Seven penthouses and 38 Signature Residences come with the buyer’s choice of a limited-edition DBX or a DB11, or the three-story penthouse comes with the final Aston Martin Vulcan.
For the owner who has said, “I love my Aston Martin so much I could live in it,” the English purveyor of grand tourers would like to turn your attention to Miami. The Aston Martin Residences next to the Miami River, overlooking Biscayne Bay, are the automaker’s first wholesale luxury residential development, a 65-story, sail-shaped tower with 391 apartments. The tower isn’t scheduled for completion until 2022, but it enjoyed its christening when it hosted the debut of the DBX SUV in the Americas.

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Aston Martin

There should be plenty more examples of the DBX at the residences soon enough. Buyers of the 38 Signature apartments and seven penthouses will get to choose a housewarming gift of either a DBX Riverwalk Edition or DB11 Riverwalk Edition. Spec’d by Aston Martin’s executive VP and chief creative officer Marek Reichman, the Riverwalk Editions are limited to 45 examples just for this building. If you’re reaching for your calculators, know that Signature accommodations run from $5.3 million to $7.7 million, while single-level penthouses start at $14 million.

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At the top of the sail sits a three-story penthouse, taking up 27,191 square feet and costing $50 million. Instead of a welcome-to-the-neighborhood carrot cake, that owner will receive the final Aston Martin Vulcan as spec’d by Reichman. The Vulcan was the carbon-fiber-bodied, track-only beast powered by a 7.0-liter V-12 with 820 horsepower, limited to 24 units and priced at $2.3 million.

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Aston Martin Vulcan.
Aston Martin

Elsewhere among the luxury, in addition to a four-story suite of Sky Amenities such as a virtual golf room, chef’s kitchen, and two cinemas, the Aston Martin Residences will incorporate a deep-water superyacht marina with direct access to Biscayne Bay. Aston Martin hasn’t released a boat since the AM37 four years ago, but we can see that changing now.

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As of writing, the residences are more than 60 percent sold. For jet setters with business in New York and wishing to stay on brand, there are five Aston Martin–designed residences at 130 William Street in Manhattan, and Aston Martin’s Galleries and Lairs service will soon complete the $7.7 million, 6000-square-foot Sylvan Rock house about 80 miles outside New York City that’s offered with a matching DBX in Onyx Black.
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Last week, we revealed our 10Best picks for 2021, which got us thinking about the history of the competition. We challenged the Window Shop crew to look at every winner since 1983 and pick their favorite. If you’ve watched this show before, it won’t surprise you that we all chose different cars since we rarely agree with one another about anything.
We invited former editor-in-chief and now contributor Csaba Csere along for this one. Csere attended every 10Best event from 1983 until just a few years ago. With performance and value on his mind, he puts up a 2005 Chevrolet Corvette (C6). Thinking along the same lines as Csere, contributor Jonathon Ramsey picks a fifth-generation Vette, but we can’t understand why he chose the garish Indy 500 pace-car version.
The other three choices come from Germany and trigger digressions about such things as the model names of Blaupunkt radios, how to reset the trip odometer in the Porsche 944’s interior, and why Car and Driver uses the term “naturally aspirated” instead of “normally aspirated.” If you watch to the end—or just skip ahead—you’ll see a rare consensus when we select the best of 10Best.
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The new GT3 version of the 992-generation Porsche 911 is almost here.
It will have a naturally aspirated 4.0-liter flat-six with over 500 horsepower.
There are also some notable interior and exterior changes to the GT3 compared with the standard 911.
Porsche aficionados seem to love everything that comes out of Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, but that doesn’t mean the company won’t listen. And when we spent a few hours with Andreas Preuninger, who heads the development of the new 2021 Porsche 911 GT3, we got the feeling that he keenly listens to the customers. In fact, he is their best ally against those who would prefer to neuter the quintessential 911, to take it into the mainstream and make it more digestible.
You can’t exactly tell what the new GT3 will look like thanks to the slight camouflage up front and in the rear on this prototype. But our sources tell us it looks cleaner than ever, with a lower front air intake that resembles a jet engine. The rear wing is mounted at the top; it looks unusual, and it’s said to provide an aerodynamic advantage over a conventionally mounted wing.

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Porsche

Open the door, and the new instrument cluster addresses a major criticism of the 992: While the two outer gauges are hidden behind the steering rim in the regular 992, the GT3 features a specific GT mode that places all important information directly to the left and right of the central analog tachometer.
Happy news come from the powertrain department. The naturally aspirated 4.0-liter flat six is a notch up from the previous 911 GT3 and even from its superior evolution, the 991 Speedster’s engine with its single throttle valves. The sheer responsiveness and agility of the engine is a marvel, not to mention its expected 500-plus-horsepower rating and 9000 rpm redline.
The engine is mated to either a precise six-speed manual—which we like better than the standard 992’s seven-speed manual gearbox—or a seven-speed PDK dual-clutch automatic transmission. Preuninger’s team has listened to customers very closely, and as a result, the manual’s rev-match system can be turned off entirely.

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Moreover, the unfortunate gear selector of the regular 992’s PDK box, which resembles an electric shaver, has been replaced by a grippy shifter that features a separate gate in order to select gears the way god intended: Push to downshift, pull to upshift, like in a race car. Preuninger likes to use the console-mounted shifter in spite of the nicely executed, wheel-mounted paddles. So do we.

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Porsche

The chassis features a major change in the form of a race-inspired multilink front suspension setup—a 911 first. There are no electronically controlled engine mounts on the new model. They were deemed unnecessary, just like the extra weight they would have added.
Meanwhile, Preuninger has further derivatives on his mind. There will be another iteration of the GT3 Touring, which does such a marvelous job of giving just the slightest hint of its awesome performance. This time around, both the regular GT3 and the Touring will be available with both transmissions. And we can safely assume there will eventually be a GT3 RS again. The customers will love them all.
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The next Lamborghini Aventador will have a V-12 in the form of a naturally aspirated, hybrid-assisted engine.
With Bentley moving toward an all-EV future, it looks like this will be the last remaining 12-cylinder in the Volkswagen Group.
The next-gen Aventador is expected out next year.
As supercar makers are downsizing capacities and shedding cylinders from their combustion engines, one is determined to buck the trend. Lamborghini is planning to continue to offer a V-12 engine in the replacement for the Aventador—one that will use hybrid assistance but won’t be turbocharged.
According to Lamborghini’s long-serving chief technical officer, Maurizio Reggiani, both the engine’s layout and natural aspiration are critical to the character of the car.
“The V-12 has been part of the story of Lamborghini since the very beginning,” he told Car and Driver when we drove the Huracán STO prototype earlier this month. “It has been present in every year of our history, which is why our strategy and our vision for the future is to continue to have a V-12 coupled with a hybrid motor.”

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Reggiani has already dropped hints about this future direction, with Lamborghini having already combined V-12 and electric with the supercapacitor-fitted Sian. But next year’s Aventador replacement now seems certain to continue the Italian brand’s trademark powertrain layout for another generation. And while he is happy to extol the virtues of the V-12, he insists that the decision to stick with natural aspiration is equally important to preserving the car’s character.
“I remember when I started working in Modena, the people I learned from told me that naturally aspirated engines are how you prove engineering is good,” he said, “because nothing helps you. You must be able to suck as much air as possible and then, based only on this, put more fuel inside the combustion chamber to generate power. If you have a machine to push air, it becomes more a question of the structure of the engine and how much boost it can take. With a big enough turbo, you can produce almost any output.”
In addition to the advantages of throttle response—something Lamborghini’s sports cars remain exemplars of—Reggiani says that natural aspiration remains critical for the searing soundtrack Lamborghini buyers expect. “When you have a turbo you have a damper on the sound, like a muffler,” he explained. “It is filtered by the turbo, and you end up trying to use artificial sound to reproduce what should be spontaneous and natural.”
While electrical assistance is largely required to meet increasingly stringent CO2 targets and will bring additional mass, Reggiani also says it will bring other benefits. “You can add performance, but you can also fill in the weaknesses of the naturally aspirated engine, especially where torque is weak,” he explains.
The use of an electrically powered front axle also removes the requirement to run a propeller shaft down the center of the car, with Reggiani hinting the Aventador replacement will use a similar system to the Ferrari SF90. “If you have the possibility to use an electric front axle with torque vectoring left and right, you can do something truly exceptional in terms of helping the driver for traction and handling . . . it is like a collaboration between powertrain and chassis development, making a car that can stay exactly on a radius without any form of correction. This is like a dream for engineering.”
With Bentley’s confirmation that it will soon be dropping its W-12 engine ahead of an entirely electric future, Lamborghini is set to be the last brand within the Volkswagen Group to offer 12-cylinder power. Long may it continue.
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