The new Aston Martin DB11 is so freshly rebooted they're still a rarity on the roads, and yet that hasn't stopped the company from iterating quickly to fill the many niches its previous generation occupied. It all started with the V12, of course, then came the V8 before the drop-top Volante. Three flavors in just over a year, and now here comes the fourth. It's the new $241,000 Aston Martin DB11 AMR. This version is faster and sharper than before, but can it still fill the many needs of the grand tourer? I headed out to Germany to find out.

A delicate balance

The modern DB11 is meant to be the quintessential grand tourer. That is, a car that's big and comfortable, yet fast and unabashedly gorgeous. These cars must turn heads and excite senses yet also hoover up big miles effortlessly. Covering all those bases is an incredibly difficult task, yet it's one that the original DB11 does remarkably well. Arguably, the follow-up V8 flavor does even better.

So where do you go from there? Well, you get faster, of course, but adding speed to a car like this can't be done at the expense of any of the other pieces that make up the whole. And so, despite AMR standing for Aston Martin Racing, this is absolutely not a gutted-out, lightweight, back-breaking, race-ready version of the DB11. The changes are far more subtle than that.