Executive Golf Magazine

When Ford Motors became the proud owners of the Aston Martin marque in the early 1990s, die-hard fans wept into their chamois leathers. But investment from the mighty American corporation sees the birth of a new baby Aston Martin – heralding a bright new future for the great British motor.

“You must spread your legs,” ordered Dr Ulrich Bez - without any hint of irony - as I attempted and failed to perch sideways, in a ladylike manner, to fit my 5’2” frame into a compact rear seat and near non-existent footwell behind him.

I wouldn’t normally act on such impertinent instruction, but Bez (pronounced Betz) is a charming and charismatic man and I was, after all, a passenger in his car. So, with my inner thighs angled at approximately 175 degrees, and my back bolt upright, the Chairman of Aston Martin revved the engine on his DB9 Volante, and sped off into the dark of a Tuscan evening. He left in his wake a PR team, heads in hands and red-faced at their boss’s communications blunder, plus a crowd of anonymous onlookers standing, silently stunned.

Aston Martins have a peculiar effect on people. Even in Italy, where national pride might decree loyalty to a certain sports car that comes in any colour as long as it’s red, the arrival of this 91 year-old English marque on the streets of Siena caused a buzz normally reserved for royalty and Hollywood legends – oh, and maybe Franco Baresi.

I arrived in this ancient, walled city as a front-seat passenger in the dying light of a hot September day, and experienced for a few minutes what it must be like to be a star: crawling through the cobbled streets amidst hoards of late summer tourists and Siennese residents, our engine purring, we became the focus of attention for every single pair of envious eyes out that balmy evening. It wasn’t of course, us, that provoked such curiosity (though I’m sure our identities, clad as we were in dark glasses, were quietly questioned).

When your chosen mode of transport bears the Aston Martin marque, it is as if you move around with something akin to the Ready Brek glow: other cars pause to let you pass, and pedestrians stand in awe as they witness automotive style at its finest.

But it has not always been thus. Yes, the famous winged badge has always tugged at the heart strings of those who like to romanticise all that is English, regardless of its quality or economic viability in a global marketplace. Yes, James Bond has driven Aston Martins for most of his (very long) life – we’ll forget the brief dalliance with BMW – and if he doesn’t lend a brand a sophisticated endorsement, then no-one can.

“When your chosen mode of transport bears the Aston Martin marque, it is as if you move around with something akin to the Ready Brek glow: other cars pause to let you pass, and pedestrians stand in awe as they witness automotive style at its finest”

But forgive me if I point out that there were moments when it all went a bit pear-shaped for the motor company founded back in 1914 by Robert Bamford and Andrew Martin. In the early years, all went swimmingly: in May 1922, a model nicknamed ‘Bunny’ broke ten world speed records at Brooklands, averaging more than 76mph for 16 and a half hours of non-stop driving. In the same year, the company started racing on the international circuit, building two cars for the French Grand Prix.

By 1925, though, financial problems were beginning to rear their rather ugly head. Martin left the business he had co-founded, handing his share to the Charnwood family, but it was too little, too late, and Aston Martin went into receivership.

After bouncing back from this first change of ownership, it was only seven years before Sir Arthur Sutherland took over Aston Martin Motors Ltd, and placed his son Gordon at the helm. Sutherland Jnr was keen to develop the road car side of the business and was instrumental in launching the 1939 ‘Atom’ prototype, which was sadly lost in the annuls of time when World War II halted the company’s production.

Post war, it fell upon agricultural engineer David Brown to take the reins at Aston Martin, which he later merged with another acquisition, the sports car manufacturer Lagonda. The marriage of Brown’s experience, and the two new road car marques resulted in the car that was to change Aston Martin’s history: the DB2 (where DB stood for David Brown), launched in 1950, and responsible for a six-fold increase in production at the Feltham assembly line.

While the purpose-built DBR1 continued to dominate race tracks, winning no fewer than six World Championship races and outright victory at Le Mans in 1959, the road car business steadily grew. When, in 1954, Brown bought the Newport Pagnell coachbuilders Tickford Motor Bodies, he went on to develop the DBIII, unveiled in 1957 as the first production car to have disc brakes as standard. A year later, and the DB4 arrived on the scene, with styling by Touring of Milan that was to become a motoring classic.

Aston Martin flourished under Brown, with the evolution of the ‘DB’ model and its adoption by James Bond and Goldfinger. But in 1972, Brown sold his business to Company Developments, a Midlands consortium, who removed the prefix from all new models and renamed their prestigious six-cylinder car, the Vantage, and the larger-engined model, the V8.

It was only two years before Company Developments put the business up for sale, without success. Aston Martin once again went into receivership, before being rescued by a group of four individuals who struggled to sustain the brand for seven years before selling out to Pace Petroleum in 1981. Pace invested again in the racing business, and kept production ticking over, but it wasn’t until 1987, when Ford took a 75% shareholding that long-term stability seemed an option. But it was to be a slow-burn.

“Seriously, you could look like Quasimodo’s ugly cousin and enveloped in this voluptuous chassis, the world would view you as George Clooney”

Britain was in the depths of recession and sales of prestige cars plummeted: in 1992, the company built just 46 cars, but plans were being hatched and the following year the DB7 was unveiled, a project overseen by Sir David Brown, who died soon after. Of the 20,000 or so cars produced in nine decades, over seven thousand were DB7s, proving the watershed role the model played in the company’s history.

In 1994, Ford Motors took one hundred per cent ownership of Aston Martin, moving the bulk of the assembly line to Bloxham, Oxfordshire, allowing the production of 700 cars in 1995. Three years ago, the company moved into brand-new purpose-built facilites in Gaydon, Warwickshire – though the flagship V12 Vanquish, launched in 2001, is still built (each one taking 6-8 weeks) at Newport Pagnell, the spiritual home of the marque.
The arrival, in 2000, of the visionary Dr Ulrich Bez, as CEO, was surely another turning point for Aston Martin. The charismatic 61 year-old German, formerly a senior engineer with Porsche and BMW, claims the motor company in his charge has now “reached the most important milestone in its history”. It took them nine decades to make 20,000 cars: this year alone 5000 will role off the assembly lines at Gaydon and Newport Pagnell.

The reason for this vast increase in output? Bez’s new baby: the AMV8 Vantage: an entry-level sports car, priced at just a blue banknote under £80k. Until today, the range, from the DB9 to the Vanquish has been priced between £103,000 and £175,000, but with a model that will compete with Porsche’s 911, Bez predicts that this year Aston Martin will be profitable for probably the first time in its history. How does he know? He has an order book filled with over 6000 names, waiting up to two years for their AMV8 to be delivered - and they’ve all paid deposits.

So what are the attributes listed on this little baby’s birth certificate? Well, it came with a great pedigree, so there’s the Aston Martin handwriting, true enough. It’s got the power and sporting prowess of its racing ancestors, with a front mid-mounted 4.3l. 380bhp V8 engine (shipped from Cologne), delivering a maximum speed of 175 mph – and 0-60mph in 4.9seconds.

Now, many so-called sports cars boast such numbers, but they don’t actually deliver the goods. You climb into the drivers seat and you are cocooned into a world where automatic transmission takes over and you can concentrate on listening to Radio 2 – which is fine if you’re sitting in traffic at Junction 15 of the M25, but is, quite frankly, pretty dull if you’re after a bit of oomph in your wheels.

So, when you sit behind the wheel of the V8 Vantage and find your biceps contracting as you change up a gear, you realise this is a proper, enjoy-the-drive sports car. It’s quite hard work at first, remembering how to really listen to the engine as you hug the curves of a Tuscan hillside or lower your Tods loafer closer to the floor on the Italian motorways. But once you get into the swing of it - and it really doesn’t take long to learn how to slip through the gears as you caress those undulating roads - you can’t help driving with a great big, cheesy grin on your face.

Okay, so I was surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, lit with that peculiar sunlight that only seems to shine in that particular region of Italy. Granted, I had just eaten the most marvellous bowl of pasta at the home (sorry, fairytale castle) of Baron and Baroness Ricasoli, of the eponymous Chianti Classico winery that somehow seemed to contribute to testing the luggage space in the V8 (well, I had to try it out, didn’t I – and in the absence of my golf clubs, which incidentally, they claim I could store two sets of in the ‘hatchback-style’ boot – what better test than a crate of fine wine?). But the fact of the matter is, you could transport this car to an industrial estate in Slough and you’d still feel like sex on wheels.

Seriously, you could look like Quasimodo’s ugly cousin and enveloped in this voluptuous chassis, the world would view you as George Clooney. It might be seen as the younger sibling of the mighty DB9, but it’s no clumsy toddler: a touch over 14 feet long and just over 6ft wide, it gives the illusion of being compact yet is deceptively large.

For those who’ve always held Aston Martin’s elegant heritage in higher esteem than that of the conspicuous aconsumption approach to sports car design, stylist Ian Callum has made your dreams come true. It’s an inspired blend of old and new: boasting the traditional Aston grille betwixt sweeping wheel arches and a tarmac-brushing curtain.

This is motoring for sexy singletons or racy couples: with no pretensions at being a 2+2, there is no danger that you’ll even attempt Bez’s “spread your legs” method of passenger transportation. For me, it’s behind the three-spoke steering wheel or nothing.

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