Aston Martin Edition Airbus ACH130 Helicopter Isn’t for Modest Millionaires
Instagram flexing just got a whole lot better for brash one-percenters.
When they make the film about your life—the one where you win the billion-dollar lottery after finding the winning ticket in the gutter—how will you arrive in the opening credits? If you're thinking an obscure, limited-edition Porsche, you're thinking too small; let's think egomaniac money. How about instead of a sports car, you step out of a chopper with an Aston Martin monogram pressed into the back of your Moon Seal-hide suit? For someone, this scenario (minus the Moon Seal hide) may soon be real, because Aston Martin and Airbus are teaming up to build branded VIP helicopters for ballers and Bond villains.
Based on the already-premium Airbus ACH130, the Aston Martin Edition is a special-order upgrade to the chopper's luxury package, with liveries and interiors designed by the British carmaker. Its four exterior paint schemes are based on Aston Martin paint colors: Xenon Grey, Arizona, Ultramarine Black, or as seen here, Stirling Green, with a gradient to black under its belly and cowlings highlighted in Skyfall Silver. A poor choice of name for aircraft paint in our book, but you've got to capitalize on that Bond brand.
Independent of exterior color, Airbus clients can specify any of four leather colors (Oxford Tan, Pure Black, Cormorant, Ivory) for their ACH130's interior, wherein black ultra-suede trims everything not wrapped in cowhide. If you spend so much time in luxury helicopters that they all become a blur, embossed Aston Martin wings on this chopper's headrests and a plaque on the instrument panel serve to remind you that you're in the nicer-er version. There may hypothetically yet be a nicest version, as this is only the first product resulting from a brand alliance between the two manufacturers—the door's open for a Lagonda-branded version with gold stitching and fossilized T-rex bone switchgear.
And if even that isn't ostentatious enough for you, you could always wait for that Boeing-Porsche electric VTOL. That'll end the posturing in the country club parking lot once and for all.
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