Innholdsfortegnelse for Aston Martin Legends i Aston Martin Legends

This was claimed to be the biggest-ever gathering of Aston Martins, attracting almost 700 cars to the grounds of Dallas Burston Polo Club on 26 June 2021 to celebrate the 100th birthday of A3, the oldest surviving example of the marque. As well as featuring models from every era of Aston Martinʼs rich history, from Feltham via Newport Pagnell and Bloxham to Gaydon, the Heritage Festival was also a gathering of the companyʼs great and good, bringing together the early racers LM1, 2 and 3 along with both the Aston Martin Ownersʼ Club and the Aston Martin Heritage Trust, plus dealers, specialists and even a handful of Tick ford Capris. C&SC caught up with the owners of machines produced over more than a century of bespoke car manufacturing to share…

Post-WW2 Britain was a fairly dismal place, with the great economies of Europe ravaged and dashed upon the rocks following years of conflict. The automotive scene reflected the nationʼs outlook, with car design essentially stagnant while the industrial might of the western world was focused solely on wartime output. All that began to change as the 1940s drew to a close and demand for luxury automobiles picked up, not only from wealthy clients but also an emerging upper middle class making its fortune in business. The Jaguar XK120 led the charge in 1948, helping to create a market for high-powered roadsters and their more practical coupé counterparts. By the early ʼ50s the starting pistol had long since been fired, and across Europe firms began turning out highly capable performance cars…

The orange projectile looms large in the rear-view mirror. Itʼs a McLaren, and itʼs being driven with gusto. It must be Ernst Stavro Blofeld, or one of his murderous henchmen. No matter, you have a licence to kill. Well, strictly speaking, itʼs a TV licence, but you also have a vivid imagination. In reality, you know perfectly well it isnʼt gun-toting wrong ʼuns that will kill you – itʼs high cholesterol and checking your text messages while crossing the road – but back in the unreal world, youʼre spoiling for a rumble. Yes, an Aston Martin DB5 is geriatric compared with a bleeding-edge hypercar, but remember that time you bested Xenia Onatoppʼs Ferrari F355GTS on the mountain roads above Monaco? You can do this. Actually, you canʼt. It turns out…

It was a case of gentle evolution for Aston Martin as DB6 followed 5. Unveiled at the London Motor Show in October 1965, the DB6 featured essentially the same Tadek Marek-designed, twin-overhead-camshaft six-cylinder engine, a longer wheelbase and subtle styling revisions. Purists believe that the latter – including Kamm-style tail, oil-cooler grille in the front valance, split bumpers and a higher roofline – detract from its predecessorʼs supremely clean lines, yet the DB6 reaped the benefits with better high-speed stability and more room inside, making it an altogether improved GT proposition. Indeed, look deeper under the skin and youʼll find the Superleggera construction method used on the DB4 and 5 – of aluminium/magnesium alloy wrapped around a tubular steel frame – ditched in favour of one that used more alloy…

Cars were among John Lennonʼs biggest indulgences, which his first wife Cynthia found bizarre because his driving skills were on the scary side of appalling: “Passengers had to suffer a hideous rollercoaster ride as violent swerves caused the car to hit the kerb or mount the pavement, all at breathtaking speed.” Better to sit back and let the chauffeur take the strain, which in this non-power-assisted behemoth is exactly what he would have had to do. At lower speeds the Iso Fidia is a pig to manhandle, and the car received criticism in period for its low-geared and heavy nature. The view over the almost square bonnet is also a little uninspiring. The performance, however, is anything but. Begin to deploy the torque available from the 5.3-litre Chevrolet Corvette V8…

As Aston Martin values canter into seven figures for the most desirable models, it has become quite normal to see heady sums being forked out on concours restorations. Yet the DBS, the car that was to lead the Newport Pagnell marqueʼs charge into the 1970s and beyond, has traditionally lagged behind, with owners reluctant to spend heavily on a car that might not be worth what they have invested once itʼs finished. That didnʼt put off Keith Currington when he spotted 5 ECH, looking forlorn at a Surrey auction back in August 2013. “I had seen some fabulous restorations carried out on DB2s, MkIIIs, 4s, 5s and 6s, but I had never seen a rebuild on a DBS V8 to that standard,” he says. “So that became my goal.” Although…

1947 Engineering supremo David Brown buys Aston Martin, adding Lagonda a few months later to form Aston Martin Lagonda 1948 The 2 Litre Sports (retrospectively known as the DB1) wins at Spa 1949 The DB2 arrives, later evolving into the DB2/4 and DB MkIII. Team boss John Wyer joins AM, and the DB3 and DB3S racers follow 1954 Brown buys Tickford Motor Bodies in Newport Pagnell. Production begins to migrate to Buckinghamshire 1958 140mph DB4 launched, with Tadek Marek’s 3.7-litre ‘six’, chassis by Harold Beach and Superleggera body by Touring (above) 1959 AM enters Grand Prix racing with the outdated and unsuccessful DBR4, but the DBR1 wins Le Mans and seals the WSCC 1960 Short-wheelbase, 314bhp twin-plug DB4GT introduced for racing, ultimately evolving into the streamlined ‘Project’ cars. AM begins…

There is perhaps no other car whose context has been more quickly changed by time than the Aston Martin DB7. Back in 1994 it was the saviour, the knight in Autoglym armour riding to the rescue of one of our most revered – but almost moribund – marques. Conceived by Victor Gauntlett, realised by Ian Callum, developed by Tom Walkinshaw and paid for by Ford, it was so beautiful and, by Aston standards at least, so tantalisingly affordable that few of us stopped to ask the more searching questions we might have aimed at cars presented in less auspicious circumstances. Yours truly wrote the original road test for Autocar, and not even the fact that it caught fire at 130mph could stop me reaching a conclusion as glowing as the…

Eyes widen to carbonfibre bonnet vents and splitters, nose inhales the musky aroma of finest leather and, most important, ears prick to the bark of a V12. This is just a warm-up for the senses, however, and soon youʼre opening the floodgates to an onslaught of rushing Tarmac and howling cylinders. Itʼs the result of an intoxicating blend of ingredients combining outright performance with tactile thrills: a naturally aspirated V12 boasting well over 500bhp, hydraulic power assistance for the steering, a strong but relatively light aluminium structure and a manual gearbox. Itʼs a formidable application into the exclusive club of vehicles from the first decade of the 21st century considered by some to be a peak of driving pleasure, along with the likes of the Porsche 997, Ferrari 458 and…

If ever there was a car that separates the values and ideas of the old car company that was Aston Martin from the more ambitious, less traditional and infinitely more contemporary ʻbrandʼ that Aston has become today, itʼs the Vanquish. Not the revived 2012 edition, but the original, Ian Callum-designed car of 2001. In 1998, when the V8 Virage was still Aston Martinʼs most exotic creation and the workforce at Newport Pagnell was still crafting its cars together lovingly by hand, the Project Vantage Concept must have seemed like a machine from outer space. When the model made its audacious debut at that yearʼs North American Auto Show in Detroit, you could almost feel the traditionalists shudder: here was an Aston Martin that was constructed mostly from aluminium and carbonfibre…

‘Its significance was revealed when the inspector spotted “3” cast into the chassis’ There is a rich history of naming cars after great competition victories – the Porsche Carrera, the Ferrari Mondial and, to a lesser extent, the Daytona are cases in point. But very few actual marques owe their monikers to a win, and only one to a short, moribund hillclimb in a sleepy Buckinghamshire village. Yet thanks to Lionel Martinʼs prowess in his Singer specials, and his wife Kateʼs suggestion that his new car company should be named after his favourite stomping ground in the Chiltern Hills, that is precisely what happened in order to create one of the most enigmatic and revered brands in motoring. Today, the Aston Martin name is so much a part of the…

There’s one experience that beats driving a great car, and that’s running with a group of similar machines. On a dull, misty December day, on a deserted Gloucestershire high road, the spectacular sight of four Aston Martin Ulsters running in convoy vividly recreates the way sports-racers travelled in the 1930s. This glorious set – rasping along with yellow headlights glowing through the cold winter’s morning – could have been the team’s convoy to Le Mans in early June 1935. Our historic group features two Astons from that seven-car sortie, including the most famous Ulster of all, LM20, which the two Charles – Martin and Brackenbury – guided home in grim conditions to third overall and the 1500cc class victory. Such was the reliability of the Feltham-built roadsters that six of…

‘The smooth, simple, rounded Italian shapes of the early ’50s evolved to reflect the public fascination with all things “jet age” and American’ The all too-common plight of the show car and the one-off special is perfectly encapsulated in the rather sad story of chassis number LML/802, a Vignale-bodied Aston Martin DB2/4. Custombuilt, doubtless at huge expense, at the behest of 25-year-old King Baudouin of Belgium in the mid-1950s, it was reduced to the level of discarded trinket by the beginning of the ʼ60s. Once the height of Turin chic, LML/802 was already, even then, the product of another era: a rapidly ageing, buxom show queen – too much jewellery, too much make-up – in an age of clean ʼ60s purity. As the smooth, simple, rounded Italian shapes of the…

Walking across the concrete car park of Felthamʼs Cineworld complex, itʼs hard to conjure the Aston Martin history that was played out here during the austere post-war years. But back in December 1950, a Vienna-born engineer arrived to lead the engineering team developing Astonʼs first true sports-racing prototype. What perfectionist Professor Eberan von Eberhorst made of the grey London borough isnʼt difficult to imagine, but industrialist David Brown was convinced that the genius whoʼd helped mastermind the Auto Union GP titans was best suited to put Aston Martin on the international racing map. The works DB2 coupéʼs impressive results had encouraged Brown and team manager John ʻDeath Rayʼ Wyer to take on the betterfinanced racers from Jaguar, as well as the Stuttgart and Modena exotics. Development proved slow, missing a…

For many of us, the fantasy classic estate car or shooting brake is the one they never got round to making at the time. Desirable period wagons with real power and presence are few and far between. In fact, beyond a few coachbuilt Zephyrs and Super Snipes, your luxury estate horizons donʼt begin to expand until the 1970s, when they became part of the fully catalogued mainstream. When looking for a car to transport his dog four years ago, Aston enthusiast Jonathan Radgick faced just such a dilemma. “Iʼve always liked the Lagonda Rapide and have a friend who had one for many years,” he says. “We used to discuss what would be the best car to take the dogs away. I knew that all the old ʻwoodiesʼ were just…

Discussing oneʼs financial affairs in public is terribly undignified, donʼt you think? Yet money – or perhaps the lack of it – does rather tend to get in the way of making the right decisions. So letʼs try not think about it. After all, whatʼs a few thousand pounds between friends – particularly when it comes to indulging in some of the finest sporting automobiles the British Empire has ever produced? Forget the price disparities, and the choice of exotic-yet-home-grown ʼ60s drop-tops throws up a delicious dilemma: Jaguar or Aston Martin? On paper, give or take a rear seat or two, the E-type 4.2 roadster and DB6 Volante are closely matched. Both are powered by race-proven, twin-cam straight-six engines of around four litres and 300bhp, both boast unquestionable pedigree and…

When The Beatles jettisoned Pete Best, the group set its sights on, said McCartney, “The greatest drummer in Liverpool” – one Ringo Starr, who “had a beard, and was grown up, and was known to have a Ford Zodiac”. The irony wouldnʼt have been lost on the laconic working-class percussionist who, not two years later and with Beatlemania in full flow, left the 1964 Earls Court Motor Show as the owner of ʻthe worldʼs fastest four-seaterʼ, a Facel II. Powered by a Chrysler Typhoon V8 engine and clothed in automotive couturier Jean Daninosʼ decadent bodywork, chassis number (HK2) B160ʼs combination of traditional coachwork and modern muscle reflected the cultural power struggle of the times. And, at a whopping cost of £5570, it also provided the necessary image of glamorous exclusivity…

There canʼt be many nuggets of post-war Aston Martin history that have not been obsessively picked over, but the six-cylinder AE Brico fuel-injected cars of 1969-ʼ71 never seem to merit much more than a dismissive footnote. Offered as a no-cost option on the DB6 MkII from late 1969 (supplementing triple SU or Weber carbs), it got a troublesome reputation early on. It seems that most of the 46 cars were converted back to carburettors to placate owners who were having problems with fuel-pump pressures, transistors and solenoids – not good business at a time when Astonʼs cars were as much everyday transport for sportily inclined tycoons as they were exotic enthusiastsʼ toys. What is less well known, however, is the fact that 15 six-cylinder DBS Aston Martins were also Brico…

Britain in the 1960s and early ʼ70s was a haven for specialist car manufacturers with big ideas, all vying to take on the mighty Italian establishment at producing large, powerful, stylish and expensive GTs. It was also a period when manufacturers still had the confidence to run with their own ideas and do things differently. So the three bespoke and expensive grand tourers gathered here might all have V8 engines, four seats, separate chassis and a Union Jack to wave, but thatʼs the only common ground on which they have to park. Not only do our trio fail to share so much as a styling cue, but their bodies are crafted from different materials, too: steel for the Jensen Interceptor, aluminium for the Aston Martin DBS V8 and glassfibre for…

The values of established favourites and even forgotten heroes continue to climb, but what about the others? The classics that have been deliberately ignored for too long for mostly superficial reasons, yet they pay heed to the codifier of car design, Harley Earl, when he implored: “Do all you can. Donʼt hold anything back. If you do, it will be obsolete tomorrow.” Whatever your thoughts are towards our individualistic trio of Aston Martin Lagonda, Bristol 412 and Rolls-Royce Camargue, they do share similarities. They were all launched in the mid-ʼ70s and powered by V8 engines via automatic drivetrains (minus officially quoted outputs). They feature self-levelling suspension and each represents something a bit off-stream for their respective prestige marque. Two of these range-topping machines, meanwhile, are frequently vilified for their stereotypical…

Through the 1990s, these two giant, hedonistic supercoupés from Aston Martin and Bentley pitched for the same wealthy custom. They were the last of a particular breed of handbuilt British dinosaur that, when you stripped away the electronics and the myriad power assists, had their technological roots in the 1950s and ʼ60s. Both enjoyed long production runs as flagship cars that extracted huge amounts of money from their first owners. The Aston Virage was the less expensive yet rarer car, mainly because it suffered in-house competition from the ʻentry-levelʼ DB7. The Bentley Continental R cost £200,000 by the time production ended in 2002 and 1548 were sold, which doesnʼt include the increasingly lairy spin-off models. As the world evolved around them, both cars became faster and more complex as they…

‘It was undeniably handsome, even if pre-war Aston buyers probably didn’t think much of its rather louche, bench-like seat’ Life for a nation at war, as well as being exhausting, terrifying and expensive (both fiscally and in human terms), has an immediacy and an urgency about it that tends to sharpen minds and appetites so that creativity flourishes in the ensuing peace. Even so, and considering the limited resources, the ingenuity, energy and sheer variety of Britainʼs immediate postwar motoring landscape are increasingly impressive the further this often-ignored period recedes into history. It was the 1948 British International Motor Show at Earls Court, and the Jaguar XK120, that seemed to give people official sanction to dream. But somewhat lost in the well-deserved furore surrounding the XK was another new fantasy…

The Lagonda 3 Litre and the Bristol 405 were two British luxury cars that managed to resist, at least for a while, the relentless dominance of Jaguar in the 1950s. Created for a post-war sellerʼs market that had all but disappeared by the middle of the decade – which explains a total combined output of fewer than 1000 for both cars – they appealed to a constituency of buyers for whom the Coventry product was probably not even on the shopping list. That both were available as four-seater dropheads shows how, at least in one area, these more specialised makes could trump the Jaguar offering, filling a gap left by the demise of the MkV drophead coupé in 1951. Not that their open-top sales figures would have worried Jaguar much…

‘With the roofline raised and rear crossbracing removed, the transition from DB2 to DB MkIII was a product of evolution rather than revolution’ From the moment an Aston Martin DB5 first flashed across cinema screens in 1964, both the car and its maker became indelibly associated with the James Bond franchise. But while the DB5 was the vehicle that bound the two in popular culture, Bondʼs enduring relationship with Newport Pagnell stretched back rather further, to a time when 007 existed only on the pages of Ian Flemingʼs novels. The earliest James Bond story, Casino Royale, was published in 1953, and in it Flemingʼs lead man reflected the life of its creator: from his schooling at Eton and a decorated career as a Naval Intelligence officer to a deep love…

In the hierarchy of Aston Martin road cars, the DB4GT is only outshone in perceived desirability by its Zagatobodied sibling. Five inches shorter, 200lb lighter and 62bhp stronger than the DB4 ʻsaloonʼ, the GT was conceived as a road car in which the well-heeled sporting gentleman might go racing of a weekend. As a five-star collectorʼs piece, the ingredients to elevate it into the rarefied atmosphere of £1million-plus icons have always been there. The mystique of the Aston Martin name and the svelte magic of this Touring shape have been parting rich folk from their cash for years, but the ʻexotic GTʼ tag adds another dimension of exclusivity. Aston Martin charged an extra £779 for the two-seater GT, which, as far as most buyers were concerned, was simply a noisier…

It began with four likely lads “freezing their balls off and fighting for a seat” as they bombed their Bedford van up and down the M1 in search of a dream. Little could they have foreseen the seismic shifts afoot in ʼ60s society, and that their little band would have the ticket to ride. From rough gigs in working menʼs clubs, via Hamburg, to superstardom, The Beatles – while never as huge as John Lennonʼs oft-misquoted ʻbigger than Jesusʼ quip – became a key force in fashion. And how the dedicated followers followed, with the resulting success allowing them to indulge in their passions for cars. The quartetʼs voracious appetite devoured a phenomenal amount of exotics, with a multitude of Minis thrown in for good measure. C&SC turned back the…

It may have ʻGTʼ in its name, but in reality the baby Ferrari doesnʼt really fit into the gran turismo genre: where are the requisite four seats for a start? And, unlike the other cars here, this particular car also harks – just – from the post-Beatles era. But in every way the Dino is a pure rock starʼs car: two seats – one for the driver, the other for a random groupie – and performance that will far outshine any illegal high you care to fire into your system. Enzo Ferrari famously called the Jaguar E-type “the most beautiful car in the world”, but give me a Dino any day – and preferably in Giallo Fly, surely its most striking colour. George Harrison could pick his favourite from personal…

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You could be forgiven for thinking that the traditional big, V8-engined bruiser was dead by the late 1970s. ACʼs 428, Isoʼs Lele and Jensenʼs Interceptor had all fallen victim to the oil crisis. Bitter had switched to Opel ʻsixesʼ by the end of the decade. Bristol clung on to old-fashioned technology and cost-no-object construction, making it the stately choice of the country-house set. Maseratiʼs radical Khamsin lacked the elegance of its predecessors, the Mercedes-Benz SLC appeared too mass-produced in this company and Porscheʼs 928 seemed more overtly sporting – albeit in a comfortable, easy-living kind of way. The recipe that had sustained the European GT for so long – a strong, sporting structure, sophisticated independent suspension and suave, coachbuilt bodywork punted along by the cheap power of an American V8…

Vantage has been a magic word at Aston Martin since 1950 and, in all but one instance in the ʻclassicʼ era, it meant more power for an already above averagely pokey twin-cam straight-six engine. Initially it was the name attributed to the larger-carburetted, higher-compression specifications for the WO Bentley-designed LB6 twin-cam in the DB2, adding 20bhp (and usefully more torque at lower revs) in anticipation of the availability of higher-octane post-war fuels. It became standard on the heavier – but still Feltham-built – 1953 DB2/4, so a new performance option was devised in which additional power was extracted by way of bigger valves and more aggressive camshaft profiles. In the Newport Pagnell era of the Tadek Marek-designed 3.7-litre straight-sixes, the name didnʼt emerge again until the 1961 introduction of the…

‘Lord knows what Prince Charles thought when a bunch of Italians started meddling with his beloved Aston’ The future King Charles III clearly didnʼt like change. In 1984, when London-based architects Ahrends, Burton and Koralek proposed a new, modern extension to William Wilkinsʼ National Gallery, an attempt to add drama to the relentlessly classical Trafalgar Square, the Prince likened it to “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. So Lord only knows what the Prince thought a couple of years later when a bunch of Italians started meddling with his beloved Aston Martin. The Newport Pagnell marque had been a long-term friend to the Prince of Wales since the late ʼ60s. His aversion to anything spoiling the carsʼ elegance extended to his V8 Vantage Volante…

You have to laugh. Really, you do. Eyes widen, pupils dilate and your point of focus becomes that improbably large rev counter. Thereʼs no redline, just a red needle. That and the promise of 7000rpm. Youʼre at the halfway point and itʼs as if youʼve discovered acceleration for the first time; second gear and youʼre already heading for three points. Grab third and youʼll be in prison. Welcome to the insane world of the Works Prepared Driving Dynamics Aston Martin Vantage V600 Le Mans, a car that doesnʼt allow you to draw breath, whether driving it or uttering its name. Syntactically challenged it might be, but the bit that really matters is ʻ600ʼ – as in 600bhp at 6500rpm and 600lb ft at 4000rpm. Enough to propel a mammoth 4378lb…