Well if you must (but it'll be even less reliable than those muscle cars above) …

buy a transit? just tow a transit with it!

Nice cars they are. But it sounds like you're buying a car that doesn't fit your lifestyle.

Perhaps rent one for a fortnight and see how you get on. If you find it a pain then you'll have saved yourself some anguish/cost.

Dunno about you, but I'm often parking my 'bike carrier' in out of the way places so I can take my bike somewhere interesting. Certainly wouldn't be parking an Aston anywhere like that.

Also, often climbing into said bike carrier sweaty and generally covered in mud. Leather seats are meant to be more durable, though not sure that man-sweat is a good interior smell in a posh car though (more 'a hint of mistress' I think).

Get yourself a wreck, get a sticker 'My other car is an Aston' (they always impress) and take your kids on a month long holiday somewhere exotic – but that's just me! ;o)

nico – very nice car 🙂

people wouldn't hate you as much.

Why would people hate you because you had a nice car?

people can be strange sometimes 🙂

Waster. If you can genuinely by an Aston, you can afford an estate car as well.

garlic, if you bothered to read the thread you would see that i have another car, but if i take that, the wife can't take the kids anywhere hence the reason for the question!

nomadic – Member

people can be strange sometimes

Indeed – I usually especially give way to astons just so I can follow them 🙂

Wait and buy a Rapide?

interesting point daffy, but not quite the same! as in panamera vs 911! the 911 will win every time! 🙂

zokes, i do the same, which i guess is why i'd like to own one, plus the compulsory mid life crisis 😆

Being serious though, can't you get a concealed towbar or a removable one?

I'm sure the Aston's coachworks could knock something up if it's not available as standard?

yeah daffy its a good point, i emailed them today, and once they've stopped laughing at me i'm sure they will reply 🙂

what hairychested said.

If you can afford all these gas guzzling prestige cars, then you can afford a £500 runaround.

jd – i have a 97 freelander sitting doing nothing, i am just trying to reduce the number of vehicles i have / need, partly to try and have a slightly smaller carbon footprint (yeah right) and partly to slightly placate mrs nomad, who has a concience, lol

If you bought an Alfa Romeo Brera instead

LOL you can't say the Aston is THAT ugly. The Brera is shockingly unpleasant.

the brera would never get there, lol, its an alfa 😉

Saw a top end Porsche 911 Carrera with 2 road bikes on a roof rack at last months Dragon Ride in Wales.

Waht difference to the carbon footprint would it make to keep the freelander unless its less fuel efficient than the AM?

Unless you have an issue with parking space keep the Freelander for your MTB duties and the AM for your mid life crisis, otherwise cheap runabout / van.

At a guess it would be cheaper to not get a custom fit towbar than to buy a runabout.

Don't forget there's a carbon footprint associated with all that custom work to fit a specilaist towbar too.

Philby – i was sure it could be done! i'll get there in the end 🙂

I don't understand how getting rid of a car is reducing your carbon footprint. Cars require energy to make and use energy to move around but if you have three cars between two you can only actually drive two cars at a time and they've all been built now. So if you want the Aston, buy it and keep the Freelander for the practical stuff. If the missus is fussed by the carbon stuff then what are you both doing with all those big cars?

pieface – you're talking a lot of sense, even at this time of night 🙂

Nico, its a long story, but the AM would make 5 cars, hence why i'm trying to rationalise stuff! Not very efficiently as you can tell, lol!

Give the guys at the works service dept a call, as a recall they can pretty much do anything from engine upgrades, shooting brake conversions to full bond conversions on DB5s. Give them a call and ask about carrying bikes and see what they come up with.

clicky

cheers brother will! I emailed them today, so i'm waiting to hear! I'm sure they will come up with something, i can't be the first person to want to put a roof rack on one can I? lol!

why dont you just get 'mid-life crisis' picked out on a leather jacket in rhinestones and one of them yamaha harley rip off things and be done with it?

I had the same problem with my Veyron.
Couldn't even get caravan mirrors, let alone a tow-bar.

Saw a bloke turn up at Cannock Chase once with a fully assembled bike sticking up out of the back of his soft-top BMW. That made me laugh.

Part of me suspects this post is a troll…

If not then fair play to you nomad for taking it all in good nature.
And any time you want to go biking I'll swap your Aston for my diesel Rover 25 for the day.

Obvious alternative answer – Audi RS4!

In real life driving it'll be as quick as the Aston, but you won't get so much abuse and you'll be able to fit your bike in easily. Plus with the money you save you can buy a really blinged out new bike as well. Sorted.

Please dont put a mountain bike anywhere near an Aston….just wrong. For some reason Porsche 911 with stuff strapped to the top looks very right! See loads of them in Switz with skiis on top, looks very very cool. Guess its the shape, more squat and aggressive looking, AM is all about long feline lines……

The only other answer is to build your bike to the car have a custom frame built with those separating lugs?

For what it's worth, I've got roof bars for my 911 and a couple of Thule bike carriers… seems to work ok, although had to get the bars from Porsche as the front and back are different heights, widths and angles… Retail for about £300 I think…

The 911 has got mounting points on the roof though, so if the Aston hasn't, then you'd need to botch something up and I'm really not sure I'd want to do that!

The Brera is shockingly unpleasant

All In the eye of the beholder of course but I struggle to see this as unpleasant.

thepurist – I have had a new RS6 out on test from Audi and its very very fast, and a bit bigger than the RS4 (I have 3 small children) but Im not sure it fulfills my midlife crisis requirements – very nice though! 🙂

How can the wife be giving you a hard time about carbon footprint when she drives a RR SPort?

Get her a Prius, that'll keep her quiet.

taki, unfortunately this is for real, and I gladly accept your kind offer of your rover, it will probably be a lot more reliable than the AM 🙂

Surely buying an old Escort estate or something is environmentally better than letting it get scrapped, plus you'll use less fuel when you go biking. If it gets stolen whilst you out, you'll just have a long ride home… what about a diesel Fiesta or something if it's just you and your bike?

Still can't get my head around owning a 4×4 and caring about the environment though – it's like half my neighbours, taking the old wine bottles to the recycling centre in a twatting great V8 powered something.

If you get an answer from Aston PLEASE copy it to this thread 😀

Pie, she had the sport under duress, its my old car and she's not happy about it, but the trade in value was horrendous so we need to keep it 🙁

Brera? Prettier than an Aston? No.

LOL you can't say the Aston is THAT ugly. The Brera is shockingly unpleasant.

What? WHAT??
Are you clinically INSANE? Are you out of your mind? Are you loooosing your senses?

The Aston is never, ever in a gadzillion years 'pretty'
Macho? Awesome? Muscular? Even hansome? Yes, all of those but it'll nver be pretty. Too big and clumpy for that.
It's what the British do well – A big engined, shockingly powerful, engineering marvel. The bastard love child of a drag racer and a stately home.
And I love it too. Awesome car.

But, if it were my money, I'd walk into my nearest Alfa dealer and order a Brera, in red. To my mind it's easily the best looking car in production today. It's what the Italians do best. Simple, understated, subtle style…..The proportions are bang on. There's nothing extra hanging off it: It has smooth, clean lines. Less is more.
I've always been fan of Italian metal. I came **this close** to buying an Alfa 33 Cloverleaf many years ago, and one day I WILL have an Alfa. But for now I've got a Ducati in the garage. For the same money I could have had lots of 'better' bikes, but there's something the Italians put in their vehicles that worms it's way in to your soul, rather than others that try and boost your ego………
😀

Sorry. Getting misty eyed now.
😉