Five Hundred Horsepower Comes To Blum

The execs at Aston Martin acknowledge that, what with the slumping economy, showing up at work these days in a $265,000 sports car might not be the savviest PR move, especially if you’re the company CEO. But that didn’t keep a bunch of journalists from all over the country–including the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Dan Jedlicka (left), who’s literally written more newspaper auto reviews than anyone–from turning out in Dallas this weekend to test-drive the beautiful new Aston Martin DBS (a.k.a. the “James Bond car”) all over North and Central Texas. Jump for the details.

The sleek new DBS has a V-12 engine generating more than 500 horsepower–yep, 500–and sounds like a small jet plane when you crank up the hand-built motor. It’s also got all the bells and whistles, from leather seats to six hot forward gears, that you’d expect from an British two-seater costing a quarter of a million bucks. (Now, how much is that in Priuses?)

Chatting up the ink-stained scribes at the W Dallas Victory Hotel, headquarters for the national event, Aston Martin GM John Walton likened the Aston to a “Savile Row suit” that can be tailor-made (with accessories) to each individual owner. Most of them have a stable of at least five cars, he said, and the buyers’ average age is creeping downward as younger people get wealthier, from 60-year-olds who were typical in the 1990s to many in their 30s and 40s today.

Walton’s U.K. company, formerly a Ford unit but now owned by investors from Kuwait, plans to produce just 750 of its DBS “flagship” models this year, and a little more than 200 of them will be bound for the U.S. Dallas is Aston Martin’s fourth-largest market in the states, thanks to the patrons of John Eagle’s Aston Martin of Dallas dealership, where General Manager Kurt Fegreaus is selling about 105 cars annually.

Driving a DBS is all about status and exclusivity and “appreciating the finer things,” of course–it’s a wonder we didn’t have to put on ascots to do it–and some of it is sort of silly. They don’t give you a key to unlock the car and activate the engine, for example, but a little cigarette-lighter-sized device that Aston calls an Emotional Control Unit. (My better half says I should carry one of those all the time.)

Still and all, there’s little doubt that most folks would gladly trade their Camry or Buick for an Aston if they were giving them away (wouldn’t you?). That was pretty clear as Jedlicka and I drove a red DBS from the W down to Rough Creek Lodge near Glen Rose and back on Sunday, piloting the car over back-country roads that wound through towns like Blum and Covington. There was one incident on the jaunt that Aston Martin probably won’t be thrilled to hear about, though: On a long stretch of open road heading south, our 500-HP, “James Bond”-mobile was passed up by … a Saturn.