Aston Martin DB9
A V12 grand tourer, a custom exhaust, a slightly mad Bond-inspired soundtrack experiment — and one of the easiest supercars we ever owned.
The Aston Martin DB9 joined the XtremeX garage in April 2020 and stayed with us for roughly a year, through to around April 2021. It was probably one of the easiest supercars XtremeX ever bought, owned and lived with.
Arriving in April 2020, the DB9 represented a very different chapter for XtremeX. After the drama that came with some of the earlier cars, the DB9 was a very different proposition. It was beautiful, comfortable, effortless to drive and powered by a V12 that gave it all the sense of occasion you would expect from an Aston Martin.
It was also a genuinely great car to use every day.
The problem was that XtremeX did not really need an easy daily driver. We needed cars and experiences that customers would actively choose, talk about and come back for.
A Completely Different Kind Of Supercar
The Lamborghini and Ferrari were raw, dramatic and demanding in their own ways. The DB9 offered something more refined: a big V12, beautiful cabin, elegant styling and effortless performance. It gave us the chance to try something very different from the experiences we had already created.
Brilliant Car. Not Quite The Right XtremeX Car.
Customers who experienced the Aston generally loved it, but the experience did not sell strongly enough. The DB9 was majestic rather than raw, and over time it became clear that the qualities that made it such a wonderful road car were not necessarily the qualities our customers were choosing XtremeX for.
The DB9 chapter — elegant, effortless and very different from the rawer cars around it.
Turning The Road Into A Soundtrack
The DB9 was always going to invite a James Bond connection, so we decided not to fight it.
The idea was to create a more theatrical, orchestrated passenger experience. We had custom straight pipes made to bring more of the V12 soundtrack into the cabin, then built a specially edited audio experience around the route.
Music and recorded audio were edited and timed around what was happening on the road, with sections designed to transition around on-ramps, changes in pace and different parts of the drive. It took a completely different headspace to make the timing work properly.
It was a little cheesy. We knew it was a little cheesy.
But it was also a lot of fun — and the people who experienced it genuinely enjoyed it.
The bigger problem was simply that not enough people chose it.
The DB9 taught us something important about XtremeX: a great car does not automatically make a great XtremeX product.
We could create something clever, spend time refining it and have customers who tried it tell us they loved it — but if the wider market did not choose it often enough, then it was not doing the job we needed it to do.
The Aston was comfortable, reliable and incredibly easy to enjoy. It was arguably one of the best daily drivers we have had in the garage.
But raw it was not.
We kept it for around a year, from April 2020 to approximately April 2021. At the end of the day, the cars in the XtremeX garage have to connect with customers. If people do not love the experience enough to choose it, there is little point keeping a car simply because we personally enjoy owning it.
Stories From The DB9 Years
The Aston chapter was less about breakdown drama and more about trying a completely different kind of experience. The deeper stories will be added individually over time.
Building The Bond Experience
Custom V12 straight pipes, specially edited music, recorded audio and a route designed so the soundtrack could move with the car.
Timing Music To The Road
Making the idea work meant thinking about on-ramps, acceleration, transitions and route timing in a completely different way from a normal supercar experience.
The Experience People Loved — But Didn't Buy Enough
Customers who tried the Bond experience enjoyed it. The commercial lesson was that positive feedback only matters if enough customers are choosing the product in the first place.
The Easiest Supercar We Ever Owned?
Comfortable, dependable and genuinely pleasant to drive every day — which made the Aston almost the complete opposite of some of the more temperamental cars in the XtremeX garage.
Knowing When A Great Car Is The Wrong Product
The DB9 helped reinforce one of the biggest lessons in the XtremeX story: the garage has to be built around what customers actually want to experience.