In the late Aughts, former Journey front man Steve Perry was still sick of his band even though he'd dropped out of the group in the late Eighties, debilitated by a degenerative bone disease, disaffected in his personal relationships with his fellow musicians, and tired of the life on the road he’d memorialized in songs like Faithfully. His band-mates hoped for a reunion, but when that didn’t materialize they still hoped to continue generating adulation—and cash. After tiring of a few other replacements, they found a young Filipino dude on YouTube who’d spent countless hours watching Journey videos and perfecting his Steve Perry imitation; they hired him to play in a stadium where the singer is just a distant dot, a simulacrum that would be good enough when hearing is believing. Ticket sales soared.

A car is not a stadium. It is a private concert. So when Aston Martin set out to reboot their DB franchise—arguably, and officially, the soul of the brand—they knew they couldn’t fuck up the voice. Potent, commanding, and melliferous V12s have been an Aston signature for decades, and though the brand has an agreement with Mercedes-Benz to provide AMG-sourced twin-turbo V8s to be installed in some of their other, lesser models, a proper contemporary DB now requires a dozen cylinders arrayed like a flock of geese in flight. A V12 powered Grand Tourer has been, for the truly discerning, the only real option since at least as far back as the Packards of the early-20th century. In this sporting application, it mustn’t be some baffled Rolls Royce number enveloped in remote layers of velvet and cashmere: it must have presence and gravitas. When detonated, an ideal V8 must clear the air, but an ideal V12 must merely clear its throat.