As you drive down into Newport Beach, you start thinking you might never want to leave. California might be a haven of coastal paradises, but some are more paradisiacal than others; and Newport Beach certainly takes some beating.
They say the good life comes calling from sunrise to sunset here, and you only have to spend a few hours driving around it to understand why. It is gorgeous, the jewel of Orange County. Every square mile semaphores luxury, and as you cut along the beach, amble through Balboa Bay Harbour, or drive hard along the Pacific Coast Highway, you’ll think you’re in some kind of parallel paradise.
There are more CEOs and captains of industry here than any other zip code in the entire country. And people don’t want to leave. In August 2024, when Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee chain, appointed the ex-Chipotle boss Brian Niccol as its new CEO, he said he’d only take the job if he could commute from his home in Newport Beach. They wanted him so badly that they said he would be allowed to run the company nearly 1,200 miles from where other C-suite executives remain tied to their desks. Why would he leave, when he has Pacific Ocean views of Catalina Island, Newport Harbour and the city’s Back Bay nature preserve?
It is a sentiment unsurprisingly shared by Gary Sherwin, the CEO of Visit Newport Beach, the man charged with moving the perception of Newport Beach from a residential party-land of the rich and famous to a genuine destination resort.
“Newport Beach is like nowhere else in the United States,” he says. “It’s sunny all year round, it’s unbelievably safe, and you can live your life as you want to. Plus, while it’s an unbelievably upscale place to live and vacation, you don’t have to shout about it.”
That might be true in terms of how people dress and behave – casual but chic, understated – but I’m not so sure it’s true with what people drive, because this is the luxury car centre of the US, and to drive through the city here is to witness a cavalcade of four-wheeled nirvana. Luxury cars are fetishised in Newport Beach, and none more so than Aston Martin. After all, this is also home to one of the most successful Aston Martin dealerships in the world. All members of Aston Martin Newport Beach receive white-glove maintenance service, including pick up and return of your vehicle, and loaner replacements when available. When you buy a car here, you instantly become a member, which includes access to exclusive events, the ultimate white-glove service, VIP concierge and much more.
So I felt right at home. At LAX, I had picked up a beautiful Ion Blue DB12 Volante, the ultimate open-top Super Tourer, and a model that works as a smart executive town car or as a sexy weekend pick-me-up. It’s difficult not to feel special when you’re driving this thing, even if the roads are full of them, but then that’s maybe because I had the right accent. I’ve been going to the US for so long that it ceased to be a foreign country a long time ago. Because we speak the same language, I never feel British. However, on this trip, I was made to feel extremely British, but in a good way. So many people I met loved the fact that they were meeting a Brit who actually drove an Aston Martin, that most quintessentially British car.
One night, I drove to Viamara, a tremendously fancy restaurant in The Elwood Club, a members-only club at the Pendry Newport Beach (which is one of those places you go if you want to dress up, put your patents on and paint the town kaleidoscopic colours). As I drove up to the valet, he smiled a massive 100 per cent Orange County smile.
“Wow,” he said, beaming from tanned ear to tanned ear. “I feel like I’ve just met the real James Bond.”
Americans are like Italians in that respect: they appreciate good cars. We were taking some pictures of the car in the grounds of Pelican Hill – undisputably the best hotel in Newport Beach – and the staff kept coming out to take their own Instagram photos. Their car park was full of luxury marques, but they understood that an Aston Martin is special, even in the refined community of Newport Beach.
On my last day in town, I was driving around Balboa Island, which has some of the finest real estate in the country and has the air of a tiny Hamptons resort, only with much better weather. I was driving slowly, gawping at the houses, my shades sitting comfortably under my baseball cap, and fleetingly imagining I was in a film. Usually, this kind of hubris can be interrupted by someone only too keen to bring you back down to earth, but today something rather special happened. As I stopped at an intersection, in one of the most expensive areas in California, on an island that is used to seeing the rich and the famous, a guy stooped down to say a few words.
“You know, I just wanted to say something on this beautiful afternoon,” he said, making me somewhat nervous about what was coming next.
“You are driving the most beautiful car I have ever seen.”
He wasn’t wrong.
