2012 Aston Martin Virage: The Drive

By Marty Padgett

Marty Padgett

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Marty Padgett is High Gear Media's Editorial Director, overseeing the words that skim across High Gear Media's portfolio of automotive destinations... More

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2012 Aston Martin Virage

No one needs an Aston Martin in their lives, but life is a damn sight better when you have one.

This is what all the great philosophers--Deepak Chopra, Dr. Andrew Weil, Paul John Teutel--meant by enlightenment. I'm cruising some little Spanish town with my own senior-citizen section cheering me on from a park bench, in Spanish, which means I'm hearing it in italics.

 The air smells sweeter. Music sounds better. It may have been for but a few fleeting moments, but I know my whites looked whiter and my colors were brighter.

Here's how you get to the same utopia. Even if you're exhausted from a week of running around Geneva looking for a cab that doesn't cost $80 one-way to the auto show, you take Aston Martin up on their offer to go drive their latest achingly fabulous sportscar near the ancestral home of bullfighting. Even though it's fracking cold outside. Even though it hails on you. Even though it means you'll miss the first few rounds of the NCAAs while you're strapped in a coach seat, fighting a dead iPad battery and a gassy Irishman for consciousness.

You endure because, even though Spain looks kind of like southern California, and vice versa, this won't be some half-assed two-hour run around Lancaster to the In-N-Out. This will be worth its weight in Facebook posts. Because it's a new Virage. By my count, through old dog-eared copies of Car and Driver, that's only happened twice in a lifetime.