The all-electric Aston Martin DBX concept: traverse Fury Road in Post-Peak Oil-comfort

   THE AMC EAGLE-IZATION OF LUXURY CARS CONTINUES

   Maybe you liked the idea behind the jacked-up Volvo S60 Cross Country sedan but the whole thing wasn’t Aston Martinenough for you.

  Good news: The British sports/luxury car maker has brought an alternative to the Geneva motor show. It’s called the Aston Martin DBX concept, and it attempts to meld classic DB-series lines with Rally Fighter functionality with a dash of Tesla P85D thrown in for good measure. Hey, at least it’s not an SUV.

  Aston says the coupe gets all the luxury/performance features today’s buyers expect, like carbon ceramic brakes, loads of LED lights and a grille that takes up at least 75 percent of the car’s frontal area.

PHOTO BY ASTON MARTIN

   One thing’s missing, though: An engine. The concept uses lithium-sulfur battery-powered motors, one mounted inboard of each wheel, to provide all-wheel drive electric motivation. This makes us wonder why the car has a long, elegant hood. After all, as Aston explains, “it needs no engine compartment” on account of the motors. In this application, the underhood area becomes a “forward load bay,” which we like better than Elon Musk’s “frunk.”

   It’s a silly way of hiding modern EV technology underneath internal combustion-era lines, but we suppose you can’t make the car look too different or it’ll scare people away -- something that we’d have thought injecting a luxury car with steroids would have done in the first place.

   There is, of course, a dark side to the DBX concept: If this is what Aston expects its future customers to demand, then Aston must have a very bleak view of the future. Let’s read between the lines here. The DBX concept gets:

-- ample ground clearance, so you can cruise comfortably over the ruins of modern civilization

-- all-wheel drive, so crumbling infrastructure won’t slow you down

-- an electric powertrain, so Peak Oil won’t limit your mobility

This is an Aston Martin for an eco-conscious Mad Max, not James Bond. This is the anti-Vulcan. We’re confused, and a little afraid.