These two musclebound monsters sit at the very top of the sports SUV tree, but which is the king of the jungle?…
The contenders
New Aston Martin DBX 707
List price £192,420Target price £192,420
Packing nearly 700bhp, could this range-topping version of the DBX be the ultimate sports SUV?
New Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT
List price £152,920Target price £152,920
Porsche’s top Cayenne Coupé is the most driver-focused SUV we’ve tested to date
According to a recent article in the New Yorker, cleverly titled ‘The Haves and the Have-Yachts’, 2022 was the year of the superyacht. But, in our opinion, the must-have purchase for the super-rich in 2023 might be the super-SUV.
We say ‘in our opinion’, because unlike superyachts, which are summed up as “any pleasure craft with a working crew that is more than 98 feet in length”, the super-SUV is such a new phenomenon that it has yet to be defined. If we were asked to outline the startlingly broad remit of the SSUV (see what we did there?), we’d argue that it has to deliver supercar-rivalling straight-line performance, unrestrained luxury, superb handling abilities and a good helping of practicality to justify its bulky SUV frame.
In other words, one vehicle to do it all. Which brings us to the Aston Martin DBX 707, the most powerful SUV ever produced Yes, really; compared with the ‘regular’ DBX on which it’s based, the 707’s power climbs from 542bhp to 697bhp (707PS), thanks to a set of larger turbos and improved cooling for its mighty 4.0-litre V8 engine. To harness all of that extra power, Aston’s range-topper also gets revised suspension, fade-resistant carbon-ceramic brakes, a strengthened rear differential to handle the extra power, and an aerodynamic makeover. The changes are so major that it makes the £18,000 price premium over the regular DBX look – dare we say it – quite reasonable.
Aston Martin has even hinted that it wants to take the DBX 707 to the Nürburgring Nordschleife race track with the aim of demolishing the current 7min 38sec SUV lap record. A record that happens to be held by our second contender: the mighty Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT.
As you might have gathered from its brisk ‘Ring lap, the Turbo GT is about more than just straight line-speed, although, with its 4.0-litre V8 producing 631bhp, it’s certainly not short on poke. What’s more, the Cayenne Coupé’s underpinnings have been thoroughly re-engineered in the name of better handling for the GT; we’re talking fettled rear-wheel steering, stiffer air suspension, a more aggressive torque vectoring system to help the car turn in to corners quicker, and specially developed Pirelli P Zero Corsa tyres. It even has a lightweight carbonfibre roof.
The result is comfortably the fastest and most expensive Cayenne yet. So, should Aston Martin be worried?
Driving
Performance, ride, handling, refinement
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re sitting on the deck of your yacht as it leaves port. But instead of it accelerating nice and steadily out to sea, it lifts its bow and powers towards the horizon with the pace of a jet ski, just as you’re taking a sip of your Negroni. That hopefully goes some way to describing what it’s like to deploy launch control in both the DBX and Cayenne; against the stopwatch, we timed both of these heavyweights from 0-60mph in just 3.3sec.
For context, that’s more than half a second quicker than the Aston Martin DB11 V12 coupé we tested some years ago. And yes, you might rightly argue that that car doesn’t have the benefit of four-wheel drive to help with traction off the line, but the fact is these SUVs would leave it struggling in their wake even when it’s up and running.
Dive even deeper into the numbers and you’ll find that beyond 60mph, the DBX just has the edge over the less powerful Cayenne, but the gap is virtually undetectable from behind the wheel. The most obvious difference between the two cars is the noise they make. With its guttural, race car-aping engine note, even small bursts of acceleration in the DBX is truly theatrical, while the titanium exhaust on the Cayenne emits a more subdued bellow.
But don’t go thinking the Cayenne isn’t exciting, because the way it decimates a tricky series of corners is simply mind-bending. Thanks to steering that’s beautifully weighted and brakes that are as precise as they are strong, you can carry an incredible amount of speed into corners. And as the forces build, the car just grips harder, thanks in part to active anti-roll bars that ensure body lean is almost non-existent. It’s all very un-SUV-like. As is the four-wheel drive system’s predilection to send as much power to the rear wheels as possible on the exit of a corner, allowing you to play with the balance of the car at will.
The DBX isn’t quite as nimble, but we’re still talking pretty small margins here. And while it was a few tenths slower around our private handling circuit than the Cayenne, on a bumpy British B-road it doesn’t have as much of a tendency to rock your head from side to side, or for its wide tyres to cause the steering wheel to writhe over ruts in the road. In fact, the DBX’s steering is wonderfully communicative, allowing you to place this two-metre-wide behemoth with real precision; it seems to shrink around you. Its blend of comfort and control is simply better than the somewhat uncompromising Cayenne.
Aston Martin has also put a lot of work into taming the regular DBX’s frenetic low-speed ride by tweaking the 707’s suspension, and it has worked. It does a better job of rounding off raised manhole covers around town than the Cayenne and is impressively cosseting on the motorway. And while both cars drum up a bit of road noise at high speeds due to the huge amount of rubber in contact with the road, neither will leave you worn out after a day at the wheel.
