Driving like Bond & other ramblings

Took the Aston Martin DB9 out at the weekend, covered 500km's over 2 days in the end. The DB9 being the current Aston Martin range topper was a good car to be enlightened to the whole Aston Martin experience for the first time. Great long distance tourer, a sports car it is not. There were a couple of times I pushed it a bit too hard and it became unsettled (loosing traction), the stability control kicking in and fixing things up quickly and effortlessly. Speeds and corners I could push the Elise or Audi R8 through hard, the DB9 got upset with me.

Still as a GT it was amazing, it reminded me a lot of my dad's BMW 535 with its effortless torque and its relaxing ride, the DB9 has 80% of its torque from just 1500rpm, beautiful to drive with.

I managed to kerb it doing a reverse park during a photo shoot at Olympic park yesterday and made a 6cm rim scratch. Before the club called I phoned around for 3 quotes to fix it to prepare myself for the shock and they were all around $250-$300 to fix it, amazing. The club called mid-morning and they said they noticed a large scratch on the alloy which was fresh. They said no worries, just put it down as wear and tear basically, I thought that was a pretty good call of them.

Yesterday during the photo shoot a friend arrived with a lovely example Lotus Esprit Sport 350 he bought last week. Only 5000km's on the clock, only 45 made worldwide and only 1 in Australia. The Sport 350 was the 2^nd to last rare edition Lotus made specials before shutting down the Esprit production line. A few cyclists in their 40's turned up and it was obvious to them this was a childhood poster dream of theirs as they were growing up; they were besotted by the car.

Later this week I'll be lucky enough to get a road test of the Lotus Exige CUP 260 before it gets transported down to Tasmania for Dean Evan's to race in the famous event. I think Lotus are super keen to get me into it to give me and Sanna a drive before it goes to Taz to act as a Lotus PR machine.

That's my ramblings off my mind for now...