Often, car makers assess new vehicles before production by using a development mule. Mules are drivable but heavily disguised pre-production vehicles that carefully hide what is really happening underneath. This can be by using familiar older body styles, clumsy panels, heavy camouflage, or a combination of all three. This may look like a tired and tatty DB9 but look more closely and it’s possible to see a significant and crudely finished gap in the bodywork between the front wings and the leading edge of the doors. Perhaps hard to believe but this is the very first iteration of the DB11, built in the Aston Martin prototype workshop.
Underneath this ‘tatty DB9’, the engineering is all brand-new DB11, including an early version of the 5.2 litre twin-turbo V12.
