Having spent most of its history building large-ish grand tourers, Aston’s detoured into more pedestrian territory as of late, first aiming for a slice of the 911’s pie with the eight-cylinder Vantage and now with the rather preposterous Cygnet city car. And while it continues to lob balls into lofty-and-loftier territory with the Virage and the One-77, what better way to engage the plebes than by offering up an iPhone app?
Having built some Aston/telephone equity with a recent concept phone and the free Explore program for the iPhone (released in December), the company has followed up with the full-boat Aston Martin Experience app. A location-aware driving aid/tour guide, the Experience—as it stands right now—is a bit of a gimmick, but could be used as a social-networking, trip-planning nexus if Aston chooses to move it in that direction. We bought the app (warning, it’s chock-full of superfluous videos and as such, might be best purchased as an overnight download) and tried out the telemetry functions during a quick test spin in a vehicle that was decidedly not an Aston Martin. The recorded lateral reading seemed seat-of-the-pants okay (although it would probably be way off from the test gear we use out on the track) and the highest speed recorded jibed reasonably well with the test vehicle’s speedo behavior.
To Yankee eyes, the app is decidedly Euro-centric. The only two North American cities represented in the repurposed material from the A Hedonist’s Guide travel books are New York and Los Angeles. What’s more, only one of Aston’s featured driving roads is in the US — the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu to Ventura. We’d contend that the featured stretch of PCH isn’t even one of the 10 best driving roads in the state of California. Aston does note that the list of roads will be continually expanded.
While it’s got potential, we can’t recommend spending six bucks on the app at this point—it’s a lot of bloat for not much return. If you’re already poking around in the iTunes store, you’d do better dropping 99 cents on Tom Jones’s “Thunderball” and pocketing the fiver.
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