You know a press fleet review really got to you — really made a connection — when you’re sick to your stomach when some harm befalls it.
Let me unpack that a bit. To enable automotive writers in reviewing the extensive variety of cars on the market, automakers sponsor driving events where reporters get short term access to vehicles on track or on safe roads. For longer term reviews, writers are granted loaner vehicles for a week or so at a time.
I have never wrecked a press car on track or on a week loan. A couple got dinged along the way. I had a gardener put a rake handle through the back window of a Toyota SUV once. And, a bumper on a Lexus in my care took a bump once. Still, after several years on the job, that’s not a bad body count.
On both of those occasions, I handed the vehicle back to its keeper — who patched it up good as new and set it free back out into the press fleet until retirement. Other than some bruising of my professional pride, there was no trauma involved.
Jump ahead to this spring. I had the good fortune of test driving the latest Aston Martin DB9 throughout London and its surrounding environs. While not the most savage performance car in the Aston line, the DB9 is still one of the world’s great sport grand touring cars and one of life’s rare treats to drive.
Driving one in the English capital is an experience onto itself. While any car lover anywhere in the world will respond to the sight of the DB9’s aggressive, yet graceful styling, the Brits have a more visceral and respectful reaction to it. While they might wonder if the guy behind the wheel of the Ferrari or Lamborghini is a first class wanker, they treat the passing Aston like royalty.
The overall driving experience is that perfect blend of visual sophistication and precisely controlled brute power. The DB9 driver is telling the world, “I look better than you standing still. And, once I start moving, I won’t be waiting around for additional comparisons.”
As I stopped to show the car to petrol head friends of mine in Essex, a casual mark made my heart sink.
“There’s a scratch on the back rim here.”
Indeed, there was a staggering scrape along the right rear rim of the 20” five spoke cast alloy silver pained wheels. Since I treated the DB9 like the Crown Jewels, I assume one of the valets I used that week in Central London made love to a curb and did the deed. It was only visible up close, but any mark on the lady was one too many. It seems I can’t have nice things.
As I returned the DB9 to its fleet service home, I thought of paying respects to its wound with the British car’s great ancestor, William Shakespeare, on the 450th anniversary of his birth:
“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate…”
Then, it was pointed out to me that rims get nicked up all the time in Central London, and it would take an Aston mechanic less than an hour to wrangle up a new rim and an air wrench to undo the scratch. In other words, it was time to get over it and rejoice in the fact that I got to drive the 2014 DB9 over Westminster Bridge and around Big Ben, through the upscale streets of Chelsea and Belgravia and under the Admiralty Arch down Pall Mall to Buckingham Palace.
That’s the perfect marriage of car and location.
