master negotiator. After a long, tedious negotiation, Brown bought
Aston Martin for a reported £10,000 pounds. What made Brown so
confident in buying a failing company in a failing industry? Testdriving the curvaceous Atom one clear day on the roads north
of London. Brown quickly bought rival automaker Lagonda, a
motorcycle and automobile company that was founded in 1906.
Together, Brown reasoned, the companies
had the ability to compete in the luxury car
market with the Big Boys.
The first thing Brown did after buying
AM was to enter the Atom in the Spa 24-hour
race. The car took first place but was still too
expensive for mass production. However,
Brown had something up his sleeve that
would revolutionize the company: the DB
series. At first, according to Bow, the car “was
considered overweight and underpowered”
but Brown pushed forward and the fourcylinder, 2.6-liter two-door looker DB2 was
showcased at the New York Motor Show. It
was a hit. Aston Martin could not make the
cars fast enough to keep up with demand.
Quickly following the success of the DB2
were the DB2/4, a 2+2 seater, the DB Mark
11, the DB Mark 111 (in 1959 Road & Track
hailed it as “a car for the connoisseurs”), the
DB4, the first car that went from 0-100mph
in less than 30 seconds, and then, of course,
Goldfinger’s dazzling DB5. The DB series
came to define the brand: good-looking,
powerful, elegant, bespoke—and trophyladen. (AM was winning race and after race:
Goodwood in 1957, 1958, 1959; Nurburgring
in 1959; Le Mans in 1959; and the World
Sportscar Championship in 1959.)
Brown—and Aston—were on a roll.
OIL
EMBARGOS,
FORD,
CHINA & THE V
ANQUISH
The 1970s and ‘80s were not good times for
car companies. Between oil embargos, unions and high interest
rates, people were not buying gas-guzzling supercars. Aston Martin
was hit hard and on the verge of bankruptcy. Enter the Ford Motor
Company.
Ford was looking to expand their business and wanted to get a
foothold in the luxury car market. In September 1987, Ford bought
75% of the company. Ford began to put their stamp on its new toy:
production increased, prices went down and the DB returned after
decades of being dormant. In 2003, Autocar magazine hailed the
acquisition:
“A factory pumping out up to 5,000 cars a year—its best ever.
And maybe a motor sports programme. Car enthusiast everywhere
ought to thank Ford for giving Aston Martin its brightest future
yet.”
The man primarily responsible for this bright future was Ian
FOUNDERS: (TOP) LIONEL MARTIN, ONE OF ASTON’S ORIGINAL CO-FOUNDERS; (BOTTOM) ASTON’S
OTHER CO-FOUNDER, ROBERT BAMFORD; COURTESY OF ASTON MARTIN ARCHIVES.
Callum. Callum had worked as a designer at Ford for ten years
before leaving and starting his own design firm, TWR, where he
was hired as a design consultant for Aston Martin. Callum brought
back the polished heritage of AM with his handcrafted, sleek
and understated schemes on the Aston Martin Vanquish and DB7
Vantage. His love, passion and appreciation for cars (“I’m a car nut”)
radiated in his designs: beauty was back at
AM. (Callum is now the Design Director for
Jaguar, responsible for the Jaguar XK, the
XF, and the XJ.)
Between 1991 and 2007 Aston Martin
made over 10,000 cars—more than had been
built in the previous 70 years. But Ford was
in financial trouble and needed cash badly.
Aston needed yet another savior. David
Richards, a former successful racecar driver
in the 1970s and now a wealthy businessman,
took notice. Like David Brown before him,
Richards pounced and bought AM in 2007. In
this new era of global competition Richards
knew that the brand needed to become
worldlier and less British-centric: the Middle
East, South America and China were the
future of Aston Martin. Bez agreed:
“The heart of British tradition is not a
particular car or institution, it is a discipline,”
he says repeatedly.
Bez, along with Richards and Reichman,
have steered the century old company
to become not only the coolest brand on
earth but also highly profitable, with annual
revenues coming in at roughly half a billion
pounds. Remarkable for a company that has
faced bankruptcy four times, stared down
two wars, survived oil embargos, ploughed
through Depressions and has had numerous
ownership changes.
It has been a busy summer for Aston:
In the UK, a weeklong Aston Martin festival
took place from July 15 to July 21. The
Centenary Week included open house activities at Aston Martin’s
Gaydon headquarters, factory-based events and driving tours,
which culminated in a 1000-guest birthday party on Saturday July
20th. Other celebrations were held at the Nürburgring 24-Hours,
Silverstone Classic, Villa D’Este, Le Mans 24-Hours and Pebble
Beach. The company also unveiled a dazzling one-off: the swanwinged CC100 Speedster, inspired by the 1959 DBR1 racecar. It has
a top speed of 180mph and goes from 0 to 100 in four seconds.
In short, a perfect metaphor for AM: at once highly futuristic yet
grounded in heritage.
Call it what you will—a beautiful miracle, divine luck, the
Keith Richards of luxury carmakers—but Aston Martin is still here,
better, faster, and more handsomely potent than ever.
“Aston Martin has survived because the cars are suave and
sophisticated,” says Bow, “but have a heart of steel.” t!
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