The legendary carmaker now makes flying machines

For Aussie tech entrepreneur John-Paul Thorbjornsen, this handcrafted in England Aston chopper is worth every bit of its $5.8 million price tag.

ACH130 Aston Martin Edition.

Now look, I may have written about some seemingly super-fast Aston Martin before and said it felt like I was flying while driving it but I’ll admit that was hyperbolic nonsense, because to properly fly in an Aston you have to buy one that has no wheels but plenty of skids. Yes, I’m talking about a helicopter, specifically the ACH130 Aston Martin Edition.

And if you can buy one, you should, because the combination of the brand’s sweet-smell-of-success leather interior and the divine God-view of the world in this plush helicopter is worth every cent of its $5.8 million (you can spend up to $6.6 million) price.

Sure, an earth-bound Aston Martin puts impressive amounts of force through your body when you launch it, and they’re quite loud too, but you don’t need to wear hearing protection the way you do in the ACH130 (it stands for Airbus Corporate Helicopters). There’s just something uniquely cool about the way helicopters take off, the instantaneous thrill, the speed, that leaves other forms of transport for dead (though private jets aren’t bad).

ACH130 Aston Martin Edition. Picture: Brett Ginsberg

It’s part of what drew Aussie tech entrepreneur John-Paul Thorbjornsen (aka JP Thor) to buy this very special, handcrafted in England Aston chopper – his third helicopter, and far and away his favourite. That, and what seems to be an almost overwhelming sense of adventure.

ACH had offered to deliver the beast to JP’s home in Darwin, but he decided to go to the UK to pick it up and then fly it home. It was an epic journey that took six weeks and saw him soar through 21 countries (including a stop at 9000 feet on the Italian alps, a height near the point at which oxygen is required and one most helicopters would be unable to cope with) and more than 10,000 nautical miles, and racked up a fuel bill in excess of $50,000.

Clearly JP Thor – who spent 12 years in the Australian Air Force but never flew choppers and only recently developed a passion for them – is not short of money. Which is why, despite not even owning an Aston Martin with wheels, he couldn’t resist splashing out extra for the bespoke Aston touches (close your eyes inside his ACH130 and the feel and smell would convince you you’re in a DBX), including the cashmere throw rugs.

“It was just a no-brainer to go for the Aston version, with its Stirling Green paint scheme and Oxford Tan interior. I mean, look at it,” he enthuses. “It just felt like the right helicopter to explore the world.”

While his initial journey to bring his new toy home was difficult enough (you’d assume the three-hour jaunts over open ocean would be the scariest, but he could at least “land” there if things went wrong, thanks to emergency floats that would keep the chopper out of the water for 12 hours, but it was the impenetrable jungles of Borneo that were the most mentally challenging), JP is already pondering a trip from the North Pole to the South Pole.

He’s clearly a risk taker, so his answer when I ask him how he afforded such a lifestyle after so long on an Air Force pilot’s wage is no surprise. He points to the letters he chose for his chopper’s tail fin: BCN. “Bitcoin basically bought me the helicopter,” he confides.

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“It was just a no-brainer to go for the Aston version. I mean, look at it”

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These days the crypto king is “studying decentralised financial applications and related benefits of artificial intelligence, which has become a major passion”. It’s a relief to hear that, unlike one of his heroes, Elon Musk, he doesn’t think AI is an existential threat to humanity.

Normally at this point in an Aston Martin review I would delve into the way the machine handles and accelerates, but strangely, JP Thor didn’t want me to drive. I can tell you it has 952 shaft horsepower and a top speed of 240km/h, and that it can take six people, in ridiculous comfort, for trips of up to 600km.

So I asked him what it was like to fly.

It has 952 shaft horsepower and a top speed of 240km/h.

“What I love about it is the power it’s got; coming from the smaller choppers, where you load up with full seats, full fuel, and a bit of luggage, you can start running out of power, and the most dangerous part of the helicopter envelope is when you run out of power, because you only have one option then, and that’s down,” he explains.

“But in this machine you can’t seem to run out of power, it’s just got heaps. And I also love that it can take you to 10,000 feet – you just can’t do that in other helicopters. And the fact that you’re getting almost 1000 horsepower from a motor the size of a watermelon.”

JP’s ACH130 will become a family runabout for a while, as he plans to throw a blow-up mattress or two in the back and take it on outback camping jaunts in his native Northern Territory. There’s a reasonable chance he’ll be in the only Aston Martin, of any kind, out there.