ASTON MARTIN

DBS

A total of 787 ASTON MARTIN DBS have been produced on earth in United Kingdom between 1967 and 1972. The Aston Martin DBS was the car that carried Aston Martin out of the David Brown era and into the 1970s. Announced in September 1967 and built at Newport Pagnell until 1972, the Aston Martin DBS replaced the DB6 with a wider, lower and altogether more aggressive four-seat body styled in-house by William Towns, whose crisp, squared-off lines and quad headlamps looked a generation ahead of the curvaceous Touring-derived DB cars. Underneath, the DBS was more evolution than revolution: it kept the 3,995 cc Tadek Marek twin-cam straight-six, in 282 hp standard or 325 hp Vantage tune, mated to a five-speed ZF manual or a Borg-Warner automatic, and added a de Dion rear axle for better traction. The Aston Martin DBS was conceived from the outset to receive Marek's new 5.3-litre V8, but the engine was not ready in time, so the six-cylinder car went on sale first and the DBS V8 only followed in 1969 — 787 six-cylinder Aston Martin DBS were built alongside roughly 405 DBS V8s. The DBS became the Aston Martin of the screen: George Lazenby's silver DBS in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) and Roger Moore's Volante-adjacent DBS in The Persuaders! fixed the shape in the public imagination. When David Brown sold the company in 1972, the DBS was facelifted into the four-headlamp Aston Martin AM V8 that would soldier on for another sixteen years. For decades the Aston Martin DBS lived in the shadow of the DB5; today, with the six-cylinder cars still trading well below DB6 money, it is one of the most quietly appreciating British grand tourers on the market. Upgrades & evolutions during the Aston Martin DBS production: ASTON MARTIN - DBS (4.0 straight-six, 282 hp) : 1967 - 1972 ASTON MARTIN - DBS Vantage (325 hp, triple Weber) : 1967 - 1972 ASTON MARTIN - DBS V8 (5.3 V8, ~405 built) : 1969 - 1972 ASTON MARTIN - AM V8 (facelift successor) : 1972 - 1989 Average quotation for the Aston Martin DBS: cheapest US$40,000, average US$62,317, most expensive US$300,000 (listings and auction results, 2021-2026). CLASSIC.COM average for the 1st-generation Aston Martin DBS (1968-1972) is US$62,317; the site database carries US$141,375, which reflects the stronger UK auction market for six-cylinder Vantage cars. Pre-pandemic, a good DBS was quoted north of GBP 300,000 by UK specialists.