2004 Aston Martin DB9

Forever linked with fictional secret agent James Bond (in the books he actually drove a pre-war Bentley), the history of Aston Martin is a proper roller coaster! Founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin when he built a car to race at the Aston hillclimb in Buckinghamshire, the company has lurched from crisis to crisis whilst managing to produce breathtakingly beautiful and desirable cars.

In the years between 1920 and 1925 Aston Martin failed 4 times, setting the tone for an eventful financial life. Before the onset of the second world war in 1939 Aston failed twice more, and spent the war years making aircraft parts. Aston’s most stable period was soon to come, as tractor and gearbox magnate David Brown bought the company in 1947, and it was his money that made the company largely what it is today.

He developed the DB series of cars (a DB4 was used by Michael Caine in the Italian Job, and James Bond used a DB5 in Goldfinger) and the DBR racing cars (a DBR1 won the Le Mans 24 hours in 1959). The cars were achingly beautiful and prohibitively expensive but Brown still lost money on every car sold! After 25 years ownership losses at the parent David Brown company caused Aston to be sold again, this time to a Birmingham based consortium. In the next 15 years, Aston was sold a further 7 times but in 1982 only seld 30 cars worldwide. Despite having launched the V8 Vantage (self-styled as Britain’s first supercar) with 170mph top speed, and the space-age styled 4-door Lagonda – at the time the most expensive production car in the world – the recession of the early 80’s nearly killed Aston.

In 1987, a chance conversation between the then Chairman of Aston Martin, and the head of Ford Europe led to Ford buying a majority share in Aston, and it’s future was secure. Ford’s money bankrolled development of the DB7 and the car was an instant classic. Blessed with the same drop-dead looks as it’s DB brethren, Aston made 7,000 of these in a 9 year production run, re-establishing Aston as one of the coolest brands in the universe.

This coolness was increased by the 2001 launch of the Vanquish – as driven by James Bond, it was a design statement by Ian Callum that has set the direction of Aston design for at least a decade. To save money, the DB7 was based on a Jaguar XJ-S chassis - this was designed in the mid 70's and came with various ergonomic and dynamic constraints that meant that the pretty DB7 never matched up to its supercar peers.

The realisation that the Aston brand still sold cars in large numbers propmted Ford to push the boat out for the DB9 (DB8 was avoided as Ford wanted Americans not to have a reason to think it was a V8). With a whole new glued aluminium chassis (like the Elise) it had plenty of room for 2 - unlike the cramped DB7 - and a really elegant interior with small amounts of light wood, and zinc and leather. The V12 was borrowed from the Vanquish, and the rear mounted gearbox streets ahead of the one from the DB7. It was extremely well received with even the critical Clarkson rating it as "perfection". It is so good it is still currently in preoduction....