75 Years of Aston Martin DB

THIS BRITISH-MADE, Vl2-powered luxury Grand Touring coupe is to be made available to just ten discerning owners, with the first vehicles being delivered during 2022. Named the BAEVantare, the prestigious coachbuilt car has been designed to combine the performance, safety features and luxury of modern-day exotica with the refinement and elegance reminiscent of ‘Q Division’s’ much-admired classic, made famous in the Bond movies. Using state-of-the-art hybrid materials, the BAEVantare’s sleek, streamlined body is constructed from carbon composite and developed on a superbly engineered existing Aston Martin DB9 platform. Each model is bespoke, allowing owners to choose their own paintwork preferences and to select from a list of optional extras including mechanical upgrades, resulting in a truly individual and unique car. 1he redesigned cockpit features leatherwork in a choice of historic…

PAUL HARMER When the company that would eventually be called Aston Martin was founded in an unprepossessing London garage in 1913, the odds were better than even that it would fail, and indeed in the years that followed it went under several times – but on each occasion it was promptly revived. Aston Martin might have struggled to stay in the black, but there was never any doubt about its ability to produce wonderful cars, and the reputation of the marque among motoring enthusiasts ensured that somebody was always prepared to come to the rescue in a moment of crisis. Aston Martin’s saviour in 1947 was David Brown, a Yorkshireman who was persuaded by a brief drive in a prototype to buy not only the car but the company and…

It’s hard to believe that this is an Aston Martin. It doesn’t exactly set the heart aflutter, and its styling is neither in the tradition of the pre-war Astons nor particularly indicative of what was to follow. But there’s no denying that the streamlined bodywork is arresting. There’s something alien about it, bug-eye headlamps staring out from a face of sharp triangular forms and prominent bulges. Imagine how startling it must have looked to the general public 82 years ago, in 1940. Few cars as overtly modernist as this had been seen before, and while it wasn’t quite intended to shock, it was certainly intended to represent a break from the design conventions of the time. This was no mere car-show flight of fancy, though. It was a serious attempt…

The basics of David Brown’s story are known to anyone with even a passing interest in Aston Martin: born in 1904 into a Yorkshire family with a thriving gear-making business; set up shop as a tractor manufacturer; then bought and merged Aston Martin and Lagonda. Less well-known are the events and experiences that shaped him into just the sort of leader that a struggling Aston Martin needed in the years after World War Two. Even as a very young boy he was familiar with the goings-on at David Brown & Sons, the firm founded by his grandfather in 1860. The company bought the production rights to the Valveless, a two-stroke car advertised as having ‘only six working parts’, and when engineer Frederick Tasker Burgess went out on test runs on…

KLEMENTASKI COLLECTION The man on the gate is unmoved. ‘If you don’t have an appointment I can’t let you in.’ But we do have an appointment, we tell him – with history! This, we explain, is the very car that won the 24-hour race held here in 1948. If he’s impressed, he’s hiding it well. The gate remains closed. Fortunately for us, much of the old Spa-Francorchamps track was made up of public roads that remain recognisable today. So even if we can’t get access to turns such as Eau Rouge, we can still drive part of the circuit that was conquered more than 70 years ago by this wonderful Aston. Its victory in ’48 gave Aston Martin a boost as unexpected as it was welcome: the car, which was…

AMHT Racer, secret agent, Aston Martin fancier… St John ‘Jock’ Horsfall was James Bond with a competition licence. He was known to Bond author Ian Fleming, in fact, because both men were involved in a wartime counter-intelligence stunt, Operation Mincemeat. We’ll get to that. Horsfall was born in 1910 and grew up in Suffolk with a mother who was the driver for intelligence officer Eric Holt-Wilson during World War One. Young Jock wanted above all to race cars. He took a job as an apprentice test driver at Ford’s Trafford Park factory before becoming a stockbroker, and in 1934 he used his earnings to buy an Aston Martin International, which he raced at Brooklands. He also tried a faster Ulster at Phoenix Park in 1936, and in 1937 he bought…