Father, Son, Bond: Making Dad Proud in the Aston Martin DBX707

“In 1964, nobody thought much yet about motion picture ratings systems, or what sitting in a dark room taking in gigantic images of ladies painted gold, lasers inching toward heroes’ crotches, or henchmen squeezed through tiny airplane windows did to impressionable minds,” my dad said. “Mine was warm Silly Putty and it got stamped deep. Mainly, by the Aston Martin DB5.”

“Specifically, it was the moment Q, showing James Bond the Aston’s various enhancements, warned him not to press the red button because it activated a passenger ejector seat. That was it. That was all the encouragement I needed. I saw this as winking assurance that the adult world could, and should, be met on better terms than the dreary actual ones it seemed to present. The thing really worth doing in life, the movie declared (to me), would be to throw bigger, more fantastic, more audacious dreams into the world.”

That explains a lot about my old man—as much as it does about me. While young Tommy read the books, had the toys, and bought the soundtracks, Jamie had VHS tapes of Dr. No through Tomorrow Never Dies lining the family room wall. (Minus Moore’s films, dad loathed them.) Aston Martins ingrained themselves in me as naturally as they did my dad, and from a young age, I imagined one would come into the family one day.

Maybe when dad retires, I thought. Maybe once he sells his novel. Maybe I could stoke the flames by making him watch Top Gear with me, and show him a cheap used Vantage while his guard was down. Maybe then he’d yield.

But dad never saw things the way I did. When I brought it up, he told me he wouldn’t feel right pulling up to an intersection where someone was begging for their next meal. He’s an unpretentious man who has driven used cars all my life, one to whom luxury is a strong cup of black coffee in the morning. He was never the kind to spend big on something as egotistical as a supercar—not that we ever had the money to consider it in the first place.

Yet the desire for a fast, showy car that measures up to my enormous ego stuck with me as my horizons expanded. I went from coveting the V8 Vantage in The Living Daylights to an Acura NSX, but could only afford a Toyota MR2. I started writing about cars as a means of getting into a supercar, and when the occasion arose, I pitched Aston Martin on a week with a car. They declined, but that’s a 999-day story for another time.

Maybe Aston realized its mistake, because this year, it brought me the opportunity I’d been waiting a lifetime to tell my dad about. One week in the 2024 DBX707. You know exactly who I called first, and the question that was on both of our minds: How much for a plane ticket?

Of course, I wanted more than to just chauffeur my dad around. He’s had some serious health problems in recent years, so there might not be another chance to get him behind the wheel. And that’s exactly what I arranged.

I’ve driven an exotic car or two at this point, and they have a different meaning to me than my dad. I love how they bring an excitement for cars out of almost anyone, and the chance to brighten people’s days—just as much as I love indulging in the work of automotive artisans. I thought I knew how my dad would react, too: By enjoying the experience, but in doing so closing the book on our parasocial relationship with Aston Martin. What I didn’t expect was the corrupting influence that power—horsepower—would have on this 68-year-old Toyota Matrix driver.

We set out on Interstate 84 east of Portland, up the fittingly gorgeous Columbia River Gorge. Dad’s enamored with everything but my brisk driving, from the design and craftsmanship to the sound stage-quiet cabin pierced only by the AMG V8. He later tells me he was hunting for a hidden red button, “because Freud was onto something when he said that for a young man to mature and individuate he must jettison the father.” Once traffic thins, I find a place to pull off and do something I’ve been waiting for longer than I can remember: Hand dad the keys to an Aston Martin.

“Immediately as I pull out onto the highway, I’m profoundly impressed—by all the idiots on Oregon roads,” my dad recounted. “I mean look at them, puttering along, clogging up the left lane like a bunch of utter—
Oh, I’ve already hit 90.”

“I slow, amazed at how quickly I’ve fallen in love with the power this thing offers, and how quickly I was possessed by mild contempt for these lower forms of life unable to enjoy such magnificence and privilege. Funny, no matter how developed we become as human beings, we get a little roar under our belts and turn into assholes. That part of me that saw the Aston Martin as a beautiful aesthetic got elbowed aside by the part of me that’s about lust and dominance.”

“And yet there’s one more part of me that over the years my other parts have had to make peace with. I think it’s best represented by one of the characters in one of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo cop novels, when Joe Leaphorn talks about how his people see something bent in someone who drives around in a fine car while their kin are struggling.”

“Certainly I’m glad for the existence of Aston Martins and hope they’ll always be with us. And for this to happen, someone needs to buy them, own them. But me, well, aside from the fact I can’t afford one, I’m grateful James and I took the car well out of Portland, and didn’t head instead down by Davis and Flanders Streets, where we’d drive by people who live in tents, many of whom don’t muse about their various parts but rather are haunted and harried by them.”

Like the man who raised me, my dad overcame his worst impulses and settled into a more modest pace. The subsequent miles following the Columbia gave us time to reflect on the moment—the car of course, but also how it unites and divides us. How the effortlessness of 697 hp gives you an appetite for speed, and how the saying “power corrupts” applies to engines too.

“Power seduces, and power encourages, and power gives you a greater hunger for power,” my dad rattled off from behind the wheel. Yet he also found new sympathy for the kind of chucklefuck who wrecks cars like these. “You see all the videos of the kid who bought a Maserati, got 1.8 miles from the dealership, and destroyed it, and you always think, ‘What an idiot.’ And then you get behind the wheel of this, and you get it.”

To my immense surprise, he told me he’d consider taking HPDE courses (another father-son activity) if he were to own a car like this. This is a man who didn’t even bother trying to set fast laps when I last took him karting but shelled out extra for top-notch drivers ed for us kids. Driving safely matters to him, even if safely doesn’t mean timidly.

“If I had this vehicle, I would set out to re-train myself how to drive,” he said. “I think beyond that, I would try to find somebody who would walk me through—not like racing, but there’d be more to know about driving on another level that isn’t racing, but is understanding the power of this, appreciating the power of it too.”

“There’s a considerable learning curve, which is also an appreciation curve, for developing a sense of what it would do in all of the interim scenarios. This would be a lot of fun to drive long enough to get the natural feel of the car, so that it wasn’t just an impression of tremendous power, but begin to take advantage under all conditions, be able to more bodily imagine how it handles.”

I expected us to be more divided on the DBX707 than we are, similar to how our feelings on the Bond franchise have diverged. Dad loves Daniel Craig’s gritty portrayal; I’ve always preferred his silly, gadgeted precursors—even if the films are more socially oblivious than a fart at a funeral. Still, I’m grateful that an Ian Fleming-shaped butterfly flapped its wings to waft this moment into our lives, just as I am for the compassion for humanity my dad imparted on me. In him, it overrides the craving for a car like this in his life, even if for me it doesn’t.

We agree that automotive marvels like the DBX707 have a place in this world. They bring joy into it, whether you’re a bystander or in the driver’s seat. While dad has no deep desire to linger there, I still crave the sense of occasion and social magnetism that cars like this have. I’m sure they’d wear out their welcome in everyday life, but they aren’t a part of it. Perhaps that’s why we could both appreciate this Aston so deeply, as a holiday romance, rather than the uneasy relationship it could become.

Owning an Aston, even a used one, will always be beyond my means. Just like helping even a single one of mankind’s many forsaken children back on their feet sometimes seems to be. Bettering the world often feels like it’s beyond me, even if trying isn’t—as dad demonstrates in his retirement. There are ways I don’t measure up to the man he is, and there are ways I wish he’d known to raise me. But at least he got a few important things right, like passing on the importance of having a heart, and the right way to order a martini. Three olives, light on the vermouth.

And shaken, not stirred.

Got a tip or question for the author? You can reach them here: james@thedrive.com