So new list member Ted Stevens says:
> Oh, and I almost forgot! Seats! I've got no seats! I may end up
> putting some in from a later Midget, until I can find the proper ones.
Yesterday, on the way to the garden center with Kim and the girls, I
saw an Aston Martin V8. A sort of champagne color, subtle and lovely.
I couldn't speak till it had slipped out of vision, going through the
intersection in front of us. I finally had the presence of mind to
say something about it to Kim.
"I didn't see it," she said.
"You wouldn't have noticed it," I replied. "My favorite headline
about Aston-Martins was from Car & Driver some ten years ago:
it was simply 'Inconspicuous Consumption,' because the cars are
quite expensive but very subdued and not at all flashy." (And
yes, I know the headline was actually about the Lagonda, but it
applies equally to Astons, I've always thought.)
"Astons are sort of the realized ideal of the class of luxury
performance cars that the Zed Ex represents," I said. "In fact,
if you project forward from Odette to an XJ12, the Aston is
about the same amount more wonderful." And probably as much
more expensive to maintain, I thought, but said nothing; one
day I should like to own one, and I want an unbroken stream of
wonderfulness to serve as the emotional connotations behind
Aston Martins.
So I told her some Aston lore, first how the men who build each
engine by hand stamp it with their hall-marks when they're done.
Then (knowing Kim's fascination with textiles and stitchery) I told
her how they make -- or made -- the interiors. "There is, or was
as of ten years ago, a husband and wife team who do all the
upholstery for Astons," I said. "He picks out whole Connolly
leather hides, choosing however many it takes to do an individual
interior. He matches them for color, grain, texture, thickness,
and probably other characteristics as well. Then he chooses the
sections from each hide that work together the best to make the
adjacent portions of the seat, so that any place that two pieces
of leather come together they'll look the best they can. Then
he cuts the pieces out and gives them to his wife, who hand-
sews them into the proper position."
"She *hand-sews* the leather?" Kim asked, impressed yet dubious.
"If I recall, she uses the sharpened fork thing for piercing holes
in the edge of the leather, then stitches them together by hand."
"That's incredible," Kim said, shaking her head. "What do you do
to replace those people?"
"That's why I said they did this ten years ago," I replied. "The
article gave the impression that they were a little old man and woman
who did this. I don't know how it's being done today in Newport Pagnell."
"Newport Pagnell?"
"That's where they build Astons. I mean, Detroit, Gotheborg, even
Stuttgart are pretty prosaic names as places for car factories when
you compare them to Newport Pagnell. It might be even cooler than
Abingdon-on-Thames, which is about as thoroughly British a name as
it gets -- that or maybe Malvern Link, where they build Morgans."
We arrived at the garden center, where a couple of people in the
parking lot swiveled their heads to look at the '63 122S we were
driving.
And it wasn't till much later that I realized I hadn't even once
mentioned Sean Connery or Ian Fleming. Or even that Bertie Wooster
drives an Aston in the BBC versions of the Wodehouse stories that
we watched religiously earlier this year.
--Scott "And knowing me, Shelby's omission is even more surprising" Fisher
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