There is a 2008 Aston Martin DBS with a six-speed manual gearbox for sale at £119,850. A few listings further on there is a 2018 DBS Superleggera with 715 bhp for £119,990. One is a decade older and has 510 bhp, and their asking prices are almost exactly the same. That one coincidence explains more about this corner of the market than any chart could.
Right now there are 50 cars badged DBS at UK specialists, spread across 34 dealers. The median asking price is £127,950, the cheapest is £68,980 and the dearest is £1,395,000. Six left dealers' stock in the last month, and in the same period there was exactly one price cut. It is a quiet, steady market, and a strange one, because the name covers three cars that have almost nothing in common beyond the badge and a V12 in two of them.
Three cars, one name
Seven of the 50 are the original DBS, the David Brown car launched in 1967, all from 1968 to 1971. Fifteen are the 2007 to 2012 DBS, the V12 car that took over from the DB9 at the top of the range. Twenty-five are from 2018 onwards: the DBS Superleggera, its Volante, and the run-out specials. Three more are listed without a year.
The classics run from £125,000 for a 1969 car at Desmond J Smail in Olney to £195,000 for a 1971 car at Nicholas Mee in Hatfield. The Vantage-engined cars, with the triple-carburettor straight-six, take up most of that range. Aston Workshop in Beamish has two of them, and its 1969 DBS Vantage in Celeste Blue, at £179,950 with 71,142 miles, is a good reminder that the original DBS was a four-seat grand tourer before it was anything else. Those seven cars trade among themselves. For our purposes, the interesting arithmetic is between the other two generations.
The manual is what sets the 2007 car's price
Of the 15 DBS from 2007 to 2012, five are manuals, and that one fact sorts the whole list. Every automatic with a price showing is asking between £68,980 and £104,950. Every manual is asking between £94,990 and £129,950. The manuals start roughly where the automatics stop.
The way in is a 2012 DBS Carbon Black, which the listing describes as a Volante, at £68,980 with 43,000 miles at Tier One Automotive in Kings Langley. Romans of St Albans has a 2010 Carbon Black Edition at £69,995. Above them the automatics run on, with a Carbon Edition Volante at Hamilton Grays in Loughborough at £99,950 and a 5,000-mile 2009 car at Tom Hartley in Swadlincote at £104,950.
The manuals tell a different story. The Auto Lounge in Aberdeen has a 2008 manual at £94,990 with 62,389 miles, more than any other car of this generation on sale. Warford Cars in Altrincham and European Prestige Northern Ireland in Newtownabbey both ask £109,995. Then there is the car I started with, a 2008 DBS manual in Storm Black at McGurk Performance Cars in Kineton: one owner from new, 23,600 miles, £119,850.
At the top is a 2009 DBS Manual in Toro Red at Nicholas Mee, £129,950 with 16,671 miles. It already shows a deposit taken. The listing says Toro Red appears on only nine DBS in the factory records, and only two of those were right-hand-drive UK cars. That is the market's priorities in one car: the gearbox, the colour, the miles, and how few of each.
I'm not surprised. The DBS was among the last big front-engined V12 cars you could buy with a clutch pedal and a gear lever. The automatic was the six-speed Touchtronic, a perfectly good gearbox in a grand tourer, but there will always be more automatics than manuals. Buyers who want this generation tend to want the version that can't be replaced, and the prices show it.
The Superleggera is the logical one
The DBS Superleggera arrived in 2018 with a 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12, 715 bhp and a claimed 211 mph, and an automatic gearbox only. The coupés start at £119,950 for a 2018 car at Drew Wheeler. Just behind is a 2018 DBS Superleggera in grey at Acklam Cars in Middlesbrough, £119,990 with 18,516 miles. From there the coupés climb slowly. H.R. Owen in London and Nicholas Mee both ask £124,950, and GKirby Collection in Warninglid £124,995. A 2022 car at TOP 555 in Oakham is £150,000.
The Volantes start just under £140,000. Magma Cars in Salfords asks £139,995 for a 2019 car and VVS UK in Kent £139,990 for a 2020 one. Joe Macari in London has a 2022 Volante with 1,080 miles at £174,950. The coupé that sets the middle of the whole DBS market is a 2020 car at Redline Specialist Cars in Leeds, which went from £129,950 to £127,950. That is the one price cut in the last month, and the figure happens to be the median for all 50 cars.
Above all of that are the specials. The Supercar Rooms in Hartlebury has a 2023 DBS 770 Ultimate in Minotaur Green, one of 300 coupés, at £274,995 with 600 miles. Redline has another Ultimate at £289,990. Then, well beyond any reasonable comparison, Nicholas Mee lists the DBS GT Zagato verification prototype at £1,395,000, and that one car explains why the top of the market looks the way it does.
Where the two generations meet
At the same money, then, a buyer has a real choice. On one side is a 2008 car with 510 bhp, naturally aspirated, with a six-speed manual and one owner. On the other is a 2018 car with 715 bhp, twin turbos, an eight-speed automatic and a claimed 211 mph. On paper it isn't close. Asking prices are a different matter, and they say the market treats the older car's gearbox as worth a decade of newness and all that extra power.
I don't think that's sentiment. The Superleggera is quicker, more comfortable and, by any modern measure, more car. But there are 25 later cars on sale against only five early manuals, and the one manual with the rarest colour and the lowest mileage is already under offer.
If it were my money, I'd have the McGurk car: the 2008 manual in Storm Black, one owner, 23,600 miles. It's the most complete form of the idea the DBS name has stood for since 2007, and I can't see that combination getting more common. What I'd watch is the cheapest Superleggera coupés, from £119,950 up. With 25 of the later cars on sale and only one price cut in a month, they will tell us first whether dealers think the market for the newer car is as firm as the manual's.
