Driving: Aston Martin’s DB11 V8 p4

It neither feels like an old-fashioned gentleman’s club with the redolent scent of expensive cigars nor does it chill your bones with its Bauhaus-ian starkness. There is a simple modernity allied to a nod to tradition with brogued leather on the doors and the stitching around the satnav screen that is perfectly judged.

Nominally a four-seater (I won’t get on my usual high horse about the un-utility of back seats in vehicles of this ilk) storage is the one place where the DB11 falls down in my estimation. I wrote about the McLaren GT a while back and you would be forgiven for thinking that the Aston Martin would have greater options for bags and peripheries. It’s not the case though with McLaren’s long-distance cruiser having 300 litres more storage available (570 litres to the DB11’s 270 litres). Aston should seriously consider ditching the back seats for a larger boot offering.

The DB11 isn’t quite perfect but then what car is? Perfection is subjective in ways that can be baffling to some and pellucid to others. It isn’t quite a full-on GT car given its innate peppiness nor though is it, really, a sports car, with its engine up ahead of you and the (redundant) back seats that sit emptily behind you for mile after mile.