The Aston Martin DBS is `sex on wheels`

Blessed with a footballers-only price ticket, the extraordinary new DBS comes growling into the Aston Martin luxury sports car range above the DB9 - reports The Guardian. In other words, it's the next one up from James Bond's. Don't look so sure of yourself now, do you, Daniel Craig, in your fancy trunks?

So, let's whack the key in the ignition and get off, shall we? Well, no, let's not, in fact, because for starters it's not a key. It's what Aston Martin is inviting us to join them in calling a "stainless steel and sapphire Emotion Control Unit" - a miniature but weighty glass briquette that slides into a slot on the dashboard, which in turn glows throbbingly red when the engine is ready to fire.

Forgive me, but do you suppose any of this is about sex? I wouldn't like to speculate. Do note, however, that, on account of the stainless steel and the sapphire, your Emotion Control Unit is a slippery customer and if you don't time your entry properly, it will slither out, leaving you grubbing around on the floor.

Indeed, in the unique kind of blind panic that besets you only when you are, for the first time, behind the wheel of a £160,000 car that belongs to someone else, I managed to insert my Emotion Control Unit the wrong way around, and spent a puzzling few moments diligently stroking the start button and getting, for obvious reasons, no response at all, emotional or otherwise, from the Aston Martin waiting silently below me. Imagine the hot-cheeked shame and the fumbling. There is no agony page that can help with that problem, and I ended up having to tweezer the thing out with the tips of my forefingers.

No damage done to the relationship, though, and I was soon away. And what larks. Slightly guilty larks, perhaps. No prizes for emission-control, obviously. Birds were virtually dropping out of trees as I swept past.

The engine is a six-litre V12, built at Aston Martin's premises in Cologne where, presumably, each component is hand-crafted by elves. At any rate, I defy anyone - even a cyclist - not to be impressed by the taut, musical bark this car lets out when you start it. They should release it as a single.

The clocks are, of course, as beautiful as anything you are likely to see on the mantelpiece of a stately home, with 30mph barely a twitch of the needle on a dial going up way beyond 200mph - where, of course, you could never follow it, unless you were an off-duty policeman.

Still, the aluminium and carbon fibre body is a ground-breaking essay in lightweight aerodynamics that racing drivers will thrill to. Yet the car is also virtually idiot-proof to drive, and sleek, thanks to its Adaptive Damping System, which constantly monitors and adjusts the suspension for you, and its Dynamic Stability Control, which you can take off completely - though only if you are mad or otherwise untroubled by the prospect of putting the car on its roof and spoiling the paintwork.

The DBS also has 50cm, lightweight wheels and tyres fabricated only for this car (which would probably rule out Kwik Fit when you need a replacement) and also "carbon ceramic matrix brakes", making their first appearance in an Aston Martin road car. Very welcome, I'm sure, though, much more importantly than any of that, you can plumb in your iPod via a cable in the leather centre console. Then again - listen to that rather than the engine? Unlikely.

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