Aston Martin DB VII

An Aston Martin DB7 was just about right for a road car. Quick enough for most purposes, classic name and reputation, well made and exquisitely beautiful it remains an aspiration. It also has the virtue of not making its driver look absurd. Unless you are going to race, there doesn’t seem much point in a 600 horse power two hundred and something miles an hour monster. A DB7 is manageable, isn’t a lot faster than the 1960s icon the E-type Jaguar and doesn’t invite ridicule. Its real pedigree may not stand too close scrutiny. As the attached feature from The Times testifies, it was pretty much Jaguar XJ-S underneath but that rode well, handled not badly and by 1993 was well sorted. Ray Hutton, with whom I drove on the press launch, was a bit dismissive but I liked it from the start. Went to Chatsworth last year when there was an Aston Martin Owners’ Club event and thought how well DB7 looked still, even against later bloated Astons. You need a sense of proportion about cars. Goes back to when an E-type was perfectly appropriate for the road and a D-type was great to race but couldn’t be taken seriously for going to the shops.


Click to enlarge or read original copy attached.


Two Litres was once fine for a high quality sports car

The Times: Tuesday 19 October, 1993: ASTON MARTIN

There is an air of confidence at Aston Martin, which the company has scarcely known since the 1950s. When production of the DB7 starts in April, it will mark an astonishing come-back, after nearly two decades in which the rest of the motor industry virtually wrote it off.

Most of the 300 DB7s planned for the first year's production are already sold after the car's spectacular debut at the Geneva motor show this spring. Now, Aston Martin is expanding its sales network, confident that the North American market will enable it to double production to 600 a year.

It hardly matters that the car is essentially a design shelved by Jaguar; it has brought Aston Martin back into the automotive mainstream. It looks every inch a thoroughbred, and after development by a team which includes former world champion Jackie Stewart and formula 1 team taskmaster Tom Walkinshaw, it has brought Aston Martin back into the mainstream.

Stewart started his racing career thirty years ago in an Aston Martin DB4GT, but when Ford took over the company in September 1987, production Astons still bore it an uncomfortable resemblance. Ford invited Walter Hayes, one-time confidant of Henry Ford and a motor industry veteran, to bring Aston Martin up to date.

A first-class opportunist, Hayes identified a role for Aston Martin within the Ford empire, as well as one for himself running it after he stopped being a Ford vice-president.

He needed fresh minds, and hand-picked a new team. He also knew he could never create a new car in the old cramped works at Newport Pagnell. A key appointment to the board was Tom Walkinshaw, who had set up JaguarSport to make Jaguar XJ220s in a roomy, modern purpose-built plant with room for expansion at Bloxham near Oxford. XJ220 was planned with a limited life, Jaguar with a half-share in Bloxham was now owned by Ford, so the pieces of the jigsaw began to fit together. Aston Martin (Oxford) was formed, with Jackie Stewart on the board to ensure the DB7's sporting pedigree.

A consultant to Ford since his racing days, Stewart protested at first. 'I don't work for Aston Martin.'

Hayes's reply was succinct. 'You do now.'

The Times subbed this bit out and inserted 'Mr' before names.

Aston Martin's history was punctuated by financial crises and changes of ownership. Until Ford took over, its only consistent feature was the production of fine sports cars. Astons were always at a premium, highly priced, highly prized, and exquisitely made.

Lionel Martin made the first one in 1914 with Robert Bamford, and coined the name from a hill-climb course at Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire. It had an undistinguished 1.4 litre side valve Coventry-Simplex engine, in a chassis copied from an Italian contemporary.

Production of a 1.5 litre car, plainly engineered but selling for a formidable £850 got under way in 1922, and by the mid 1920s the firm was making 20 cars a year. In 1924 a racing programme led to adventurous overhead cam engines and lightweight chassis. There was an optimistic showing of Aston Martins at the Olympia Motor Show in 1925, but within weeks the company was in trouble.

Aston Martin was unable to pay its way. It was wound up and had to be rescued by A C Bertelli, who restarted production at Feltham in 1927, and made racing versions in 1928/29. Success on the track, alas was not matched by sales. Following another financial crisis in the early 1930s, the Bertelli regime collapsed, and R G Sutherland took control.

He inaugurated sports cars such as the 80hp Ulster of 1935, and the 100mph Speed Model, as notable for their striking appearance as their stirring performance. Sutherland's Aston Martins were archetypal sports cars with cycle-type wings, pointed tails, and spartan open two-seater bodywork.

In 1947 Aston Martin, integrated with Lagonda, became part of the engineering empire of David Brown, the tractor manufacturer, once again leading to outstanding cars. W O Bentley supervised the design of a 2.5 litre overhead cam engine for a sporty coupe which came out in 1950, together with a luxury Lagonda.

After the new 2.0 litre sports, the proprietor applied his initials to the next, and DB for David Brown entered the motoring lexicon as a match for anything produced by Ferrari, Maserati, or Alfa Romeo. A vigorous racing programme brought Aston Martin the world sports car championship in 1959, and first and second in the 24 Hours race at Le Mans.

But in the 1970s the luxury car world was thrown into turmoil by successive oil crises, sales failed to cover the substantial cost of making quality cars largely by hand, and Aston had once again to be saved. This time the staunchly patriotic Victor Gauntlett re-established it, making Aston fit enough to attract the major shareholding by Ford.

At the headquarters of Benetton, his formula 1 racing team, Walkinshaw whose 40 companies have an annual turnover of £100 million and 750 employees worldwide told me, 'I was approached by Victor Gauntlett and Walter Hayes two years ago. Aston Martin had no new product programme and its future looked doubtful.' Together with Hayes and his team of engineers a new strategy was worked out, and a smaller Aston Martin (the current ones had grown to 5.3 litres) planned at an affordable price. The way forward was to see what common components could be obtained from within Ford, which included Jaguar.

The design for the DB7 was code-named NPX (Newport Pagnell eXperimental), with a Jaguar XJS floor pan and engine block. The aim was to develop a car in the £80,000 range. It emerged as the DB7, a classic 3.2 litre front-engined, rear-drive coupe still bearing the initials of Sir David Brown, honorary life president of Aston Martin Lagonda until his death last month September at the age of 89.

The old works at Newport Pagnell was left to carry on making new versions of the existing cars. It has been modernised, but by and large the cars are hand-finished much in the way they always were. The latest 5.4 litre Vantage has two superchargers and a top speed approaching 190mph.

Jackie Stewart has not forgotten the kind of car he raced in the early 1960s.

'Aston Martin customers will be fastidious', he says. 'The DB7 must have the grip and handling of a thoroughbred, it must feel like an Aston Martin.' It is in good hands.
Wood facia nothing new for an Aston Martin.

Ferrari Italia

At last, a proper Car of the Year. The Daily Telegraph motoring supplement has elected the Ferrari 458 Italia COTY in its Money No Object category. It is also Car magazine’s and Auto Express’s Performance Car of the Year, GQ’s Supercar of the Year, MSN Car’s Car of the Year and even Fifth Gear and Top Gear agree about it. How welcome. What a contrast to the self-serving European Car of the Year jury’s Nissan Leaf (see earlier blog), which flaunts the COTY logo shamelessly on television.

I didn’t drive a lot of Ferraris in 1992. The Fiorano test track was instructive. I avoided being driven round by Ferrari testers, who aimed to frighten passengers to death within a lap. One of our number, I forget who, managed to punt one of the 512s down the banking after the overpass bridge but I’m glad to say I managed to keep it on track and return a respectable performance, along with Michael Scarlett. We weren’t racing of course.

The 458 Italia won, according to The Daily Telegraph, “Because of the pure driving pleasure it delivers – to drivers of all abilities. It flatters your driving while involving you fully in the experience. Despite its towering performance … the 458’s astounding levels of tactility and refinement clinch it. It has almost telepathic steering, superbly linear major controls, looks (and sound) to die for. Hell, it’s even comfortable."

Not sure about the rhetoric but you can see what they mean. Read what I thought in The Sunday Times of 19 April 1992. Click to enlarge


The conversation with Luca di Montezemolo, an aristocrat to his fingertips, then as now was also instructive. Enzo Ferrari may have founded a great dynasty of sports cars but it was Montezemolo who made them work properly, got rid of the red stains on the balance sheet and developed a practical range of road cars instead of stark 2-seaters. One of Berlusconi’s henchmen called on him to resign at Ferrari after losing the world championship. Luca had his ups and downs in football and ran Fiat for seven years until displaced last April, by 34 year old John Elkann, grandson of Gianni Agnelli.

Montezemolo’s title is not Marchese or Marquis but Nobile dei Marchesi di Montezemolo (Noble of the Marquises of Montezemolo), indicating his descent from a Marchese although not one himself. Luca is youngest son of Massimo Cordero dei Marchesi di Montezemolo (1920–2009), a Piedmontese aristocrat whose family served the Royal House of Savoy. His grandfather, Mario (1888–1960) and great-grandfather Carlo (1858–1943) were both Generals in the Army and he is cousin of a Cardinal. Aged 44 in 1992 makes him 63 now. Luca’s uncle, Admiral Giorgio Cordero dei Marchesi di Montezemolo (1918–1986) was a commander in the Royal Italian Navy, the Regia Marina in WWII. Good if you think Italian frogmen disabling HMSs Queen Elizabeth and Valiant in Alexandria on 19 December 1941, less good at Taranto and Cape Matapan.

Safety Fast

1974-1977 Ford Granada Ghia Coupe featured in The Ford in Britain Centenary File, an Eric Dymock Motoring Book available March 2011
There is not much new in the latest anti-speeding wheeze. The return of cameras by Prohibitionists was predictable. Roundheads propose one of those fatuous speed awareness courses to anybody exceeding limits by only a little, at £100. The Times parrots the airy talk of, “some 800 people a year,” being killed if speed cameras are decommissioned. “Populist objection to speed cameras cannot withstand … scientific research,” it says. It should be cautious. Climate changers and global warmists, to say nothing of millenium buggists, salmonella scaremongers, passive smoking soothsayers, panics over BSE, DDT and a dozen more hysterical “scientific researches” produce a jaundiced view of “experts”.
Campaigners follow predictable paths. A half-truth, an emotive pull, an expert advocate will set a bandwagon rolling and if the result is a Puritanical ban on rich speeding drivers so much the better. A dozen years writing for The Guardian showed me how it was done. Opinion was entrenched on speeding. I never subscribed to the newspaper’s political stance, although to its credit, once nominated as a contributor it left you alone. Your opinions were your own. Alastair Hetherington probably took the view that if I got myself into what he would regard as a hole, I should stop digging. All that was required was the house style of writing, which was the most demanding of any newspaper for which I wrote. Right-click to enlarge

If you wanted reader reaction, whimsies on speeding guaranteed it. During the first oil crisis 50mph limits were imposed to save fuel. Guardian readers of 23 December 1974 loved them.

This correspondence column of 6 January 1975 was quite restrained. Mr Burke seems perversely pleased to drive a 90mph car. A bit racy for 1974.

Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen

Resurfaced roads in Spain convinced journalists of the superior ride and handling of Mercedes-Benz SLs. In an era when Spain’s roads were iffy at best, before all Europe shelled money out to improve them, Mercedes-Benz paid to have them smoothed-off for car launches. Or so it was once supposed. A publicity event for a new kind of Geländewagen was set up in Scotland and as this Sunday Times column of 2 December 1990 relates, I drove one across a grouse moor and waded it up a stream. Click column to enlarge It splashed obediently through a good deal more than the recommended 60cm of water, picked its way over wet boulders, then up a steep bank on to dry land. It was quite compelling. The G-Wagen was more accomplished than the Vauxhall Calibra, with which it coincided. I praised the Vauxhall carefully although faintly. Colin Dryden was kinder to the Land Rover Discovery V8 he drove in the desert. It was an era of extravagant car launches and with fuel at only 60p a gallon in Dubai he could happily recommend it for holidays.

Press launches could be memorable for the wrong reasons. Even though Mercedes-Benz planned its’ with more than usual care, they could take an unexpected turn. The Highland river test of the G-Wagen included driving through strongly flowing water, over a course marked by tall sticks. We were warned to keep between the sticks because of adjacent deep pools. One G-Wagen was more luxuriously appointed than the rest. It had air conditioning and leather upholstery, thick carpets and, it was said, was in the Highlands to be loaned for appraisal to a member of the royal family. Mercedes-Benz allocated it to a journalist more important than mere writing hacks.

Tom Ross was editor of Top Gear. The programme had been going since 1977, as a BBC Pebble Mill production with presenters Noel Edmonds, William Woollard and Angela Rippon. Contributors included Sue Baker, Frank Page, Tony Mason and Chris Goffey. It went on to BBC2 and the affable easy-going Ross was editor until 1991. Unfortunately, like many TV people, he not only thought he could walk on water, he was also sure he could drive on it.

He elected not to steer between the sticks Mercedes-Benz had provided.


Doug Wallace of Mercedes-Benz supervises recovery

Land Rover Discovery

Neither one thing nor the other. The Discovery was a sort of Tweenie, 19th century maids who assisted both cook and housemaid, a Between-Maid neither aspiring Upstairs nor quite descending all the way Downstairs. Yet on 12 November 1989 it was a Range Rover without the pretensions, which it remains.
It is difficult photographing the motoring dogs. If you get it right with Nelson (above), Wellington (below) disappears into a black morass

Windscreen Smear

More readers are interested in practicalities than you would think. In 13 years of Sunday Times columns this one of 19 November 1989 brought more response than almost any other. Correspondents wrote with enthusiasm on cures for windscreen smear or juddery wipers, ranging from potato peelings to Coca Cola – “look what it does to coins.” Kitchen roll soaked in white spirit, alcohol, lemon juice or Windolene, hair shampoo, vinegar or bizarrely Silvo liquid polish were among the suggestions. They all, “… worked a treat.” One driver was never without a Financial Times, which seemed to clean road dirt best; others advocated car polish, soapy water or household detergent on a foam backed scouring pad. There were warnings against detergents, washing-up liquid or Rain-X and other proprietary additives that were supposed to help. Squeaking wiper blades could be cured by a) replacement, b) twisting the operating arm to change their angle of attack or, c) lubricating their hinges with olive oil. Some blamed acid rain for the problem. Others thought driving in acid rain would cure it. Salt residue following anti-icing measures seemed particularly problematical. Polishing a windscreen to squeaky clean with Kleenex tissue and screenwash fluid still seems a good bet although modern Jaguar dealers are said to stock a paste that does the job in a trice. Perhaps this is a descendent of the solution Trico-Folberth was working on with Jaguar 21 years ago.