Aston Martin DB9 and Vanquish - The Complete Story

CHAPTER 1

ASTON MARTIN, THE COMPANY

When the wealthy and successful British tractor manufacturer David Brown bought Aston Martin for £20,500 in 1947, he was both indulging a whim and getting a bargain. The Aston Martin company had reached a low point in its existence – so low, in fact, that it had offered itself for sale through a classified advertisement in The Times newspaper as a ‘high-class motor business’.

David Brown, clearly in acquisitive mood, bought the ailing Lagonda company later the same year for a further £52,500. He merged the two companies into one, renaming it Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd, and setting it up in new premises at Hanworth Park in Feltham, Middlesex, not far from its earlier factory. Here, he had his engineers draw up the first of the new company’s cars. They would bear his initials to distinguish them from those that had gone before, and would become the first of the legendary DB-series Aston Martins.

In Aston Martin, what David Brown was buying was indeed a ‘high-class motor business’, even though it was a small one. The company had developed a formidable reputation as a maker of high-performance sporting machinery, but it had never really made much money, and the disruption of the 1939–1945 war, when the Aston Martin works had been commandeered by the Air Ministry for the manufacture of aircraft parts, had certainly not helped.

The original Aston Martin company had been founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin, a wealthy car enthusiast, and Robert Bamford, an engineer. Since 1912, the two had been in business as Bamford & Martin, with premises in London’s Callow Street from which they sold Singer cars and serviced other makes, including GWK and Calthorpe. Lionel Martin had a Singer-based ‘special’ that he raced enthusiastically at Aston Hill, near Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire, and when the partners decided to try making their own car, the combination of the Aston and Martin names was a natural choice.

The first Aston Martin was another ‘special’, this time with a Coventry-Simplex engine in a 1908 Isotta-Fraschini voiturette racing chassis. By March 1915, Bamford and Martin had their own design ready, and they also had new premises at Henniker Mews in Kensington – but the Great War had broken out a year earlier. Both men were called to serve their country, and all the original Aston Martin equipment and machinery was sold to the Sopwith Aviation Company.

Undeterred, the two got together again after the war, and by 1920 they were in business at Abingdon Road in Kensington. From 1921 the company had its Aston Martin Special Sports in low-volume production, but Robert Bamford had already left. Despite an injection of funds from the wealthy amateur racing driver Count Louis Zborowski, and in spite of some notable successes in major race events, Aston Martin went bankrupt in 1924. It was bought by Lady Charnwood, and staggered on for another year before failing again. In 1926 the factory closed and Lionel Martin left the business – but later that year Lady Charnwood and a group of investors revitalised the company and relocated it to Feltham, where it moved into the Victoria Road premises formerly occupied by the Whitehead Aircraft Company.

Key among the investors in the new company were Bill Renwick and Augustus (‘Bert’) Bertelli, who had previously been partners in an automotive business and now brought their ideas to bear on the future of Aston Martin. Though production levels were always low – an Aston Martin was a more or less bespoke creation intended for those who had the means to indulge in the fashionable sport of motor racing – the company gained a formidable reputation through racing successes. It was this reputation that persuaded one investor after another to keep the company alive when it failed yet again in 1932. But by 1936 it had become clear that the company could not remain profitable if it focused so heavily on competition machinery. That year a decision was made to focus on road cars, and as a consequence production was increased to over 200 cars a year for the rest of the 1930s.

In 1939, Aston Martin looked at expanding production by adding a smaller car to its portfolio, a little sports saloon with lightweight aluminium bodywork called the Atom. However, that project was necessarily suspended during the war years, and although it was revived with a new engine when peace came, Aston Martin floundered for a while. Even though buyers were grateful to get their hands on any kind of car at all during the years of austerity that immediately followed the war, the economic circumstances of the time did not favour expensive and individualistic performance types.

THE DAVID BROWN CARS

The first car to come from the Feltham works under its new post-war ownership was called the DB1, and it was a little tentative (which was understandable in view of the times) and more than a little odd in appearance. However, it was the next car that demonstrated the wisdom of David Brown’s purchases. In 1949 he entered a new car at Le Mans that combined the 6-cylinder Lagonda engine (designed by W.O. Bentley) with an aerodynamic coupé body based on a space-frame of square-section tubes. The following year this entered production as the DB2, and it pointed the way ahead for Aston Martin.

Available as a 107bhp DB2 or a 123bhp DB2 Vantage (the first use of a name that would become famous), the new car was a grand touring coupé that was wholly capable of being used as a track racer if its owner so wished. It was noisy, cramped inside, and not quite as able on the track as subsequent legend would have it, but it undoubtedly looked the part and (quite literally) made all the right noises. It was also considerably more robust and better built than most of the hand-crafted Italian cars that were its natural competitors.

Aston Martin followed up with a ‘works’ racing programme that helped gain publicity for the cars. Some dedicated racing cars appeared: the DB3 in 1952, followed by the DB3S a year later. Meanwhile the DB2 evolved into an occasional four-seater (the 1952 DB2/4), its original 2.6-litre engine was increased in size to 3 litres, and a rather stylish drophead body was offered alongside the original coupé. The DB2/4 MkII followed in 1955 with more power and a new fixed-head coupé body, and then in 1957 the further developed DB MkIII arrived. It was this model that, amongst other things, introduced a new front grille shape that would go on to become an Aston Martin visual trademark.

THE MOVE TO NEWPORT PAGNELL

The Astons of the early 1950s were not assembled at the company’s premises in Feltham, but at the premises of the coachbuilder Tickford at Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire. The chassis were constructed at the David Brown works in Farsley, Yorkshire, while the bodies were being built by Mulliners of Birmingham. The two came together at the Tickford works, where the bodies were painted and trimmed before being mated to the chassis to create complete cars. For the Tickford company, the Aston Martin contract was important business, and very necessary as the market for bespoke coachbuilt bodies gradually shrank.

When Tickford’s ran into financial trouble in 1954 it was almost automatic for David Brown to buy the company. From early 1955 the Newport Pagnell factory was turned over entirely to work for Aston Martin and Lagonda, and it became the company’s assembly plant. The Aston Martin engineering and test departments, and the administrative offices, would remain at Feltham for a few more years, but gradually all these functions were centred on Newport Pagnell. So the DB4, new in 1958, became the first Aston Martin to be manufactured and assembled wholly at Newport Pagnell. Even so, the cars continued to...