CLUB ASTON IN VAN NUYS: FROM GUMP TO GOLDFINGER TO GUV’NOR, WITH A SIDE OF THE SEX PISTOLS

By Cole Coonce
5/5/05

n the night of the unveiling of something called Club Aston in Van Nuys, California, the president of Andy Gump (a local sanitation business) whistled and aww-shucked at the collection of lustrous, lean, expen$ive sports cars roped off on the showroom floor of Galpin Motors.

“I can’t show up at the yard in an Aston Martin; then all of my employees would want a new truck.”

The exotic menagerie of gleaming dream machines was not the only thing causing class envy: Casting twinkling reflections -- like the Almighty was popping shots through the prism of a divine star filter -- was a queue of Los Angeles’s beautiful people, from Captain Kirk to Mayor Hahn to Governor Schwarzenegger to Jim Hall, Carroll Shelby, Boyd Coddington to the guy from Deadwood (you know, that show on HBO that isn’t the Sopranos), not to mention a pleasantly plump ex-Sex Pistol… They were all mixing, minxing and drinking while admiring the variations of “ultimate luxury” automobiles that used to blithely triumph at the 24 Hours of Le Mans – and the very same cars that also enabled James Bond to keep Her Majesty safe from Cold War ne’er-do-wells like Pussy Galore and Thunderball.

And in the wake of the House of Representatives’ latest reform bill and its clamping down on American citizens’ ability to declare bankruptcy – all while also making sure the automobile companies can get their dough from defaulting consumers -- historians had to titter at this irony: Aston Martin has been a company teetering on the brink of and rescued from the throes of insolvency more often than 007 bamboozled Second World spooks.

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But Hey! Que sera, sera, yeah? “Ya’,” said Aston CEO Dr. Ulrich Bez in his thick Central European accent, as he rhapsodized about mere survival blossoming into triumph vis-à-vis good times and bad times (“And maybe more bad times than good times,” he acknowledged), before toasting his teams’ recent domination of the 12 hours of Sebring sports car race.

Later, Galpin hip-exec Beau Boeckmann – who earlier told me: “We became the #1 Jaguar dealer in the United States. We aim to be the #1 Aston dealer in the United States” -- thanked the folks who provided the caviar and the $500 bottles of tequila. Meanwhile, an aspiring thespian handed a photographer her card and her eyelashes curtsied. (The batting of the eyes was no mean feat in this crowd; there were a couple of Dupont-enhanced mugs that could no longer blink…) “Take my picture with the mayor!” she squeaked.