It is easy to forget that the Aston Martin, while always a specialized car aimed at sporting drivers, has not always been a big, powerful car, or a famous one. Founded the year before World War I by Singer dealers Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford, the new firm built specials raced at namesake Aston Hill. The first car was a based on an Isotta Fraschini chassis with a 1.4 liter Coventry Simplex engine. Other examples used Singer* engines, and Count Louis Zborowski (of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame) commissioned Aston Martin to build specials for him (including one with a twin cam engine) before fatally crashing his Mercedes at Monza in 1924. The sudden loss of a wealthy patron pitched the firm into bankruptcy, and it was up to Italian-born A.C. Bertelli and Bill Renwick to rescue the firm. A.C. Bertelli assisted by designing a new 1.5 liter inline four with single overhead cam driven by a chain. Features included pump-driven cooling of the head only; the block had to settle for thermo-siphon cooling. The engineers tried dry sump lubrication on the '28 Le Mans cars, and made this a standard feature of the low-chassis 1930 International model.
Depression conditions meant that a second group of rescuers appeared in 1932, but Bertelli stayed on. By the 1934 this team had produced the Ulster shown above and below, based on the 1.5 liter engine and their Mark II chassis. It made 85 horsepower, a lot for 90 cubic inches during that era, and light weight allowed sparkling performance. It's the most coveted Aston from the Thirties, a status enhanced by elemental good proportions and a shapely boat tail.
The Mark II sports saloon model shown below, made in 1.5 and 2 liter forms, was produced during the same years as the Ulster, 1934-'36. Other makes offered some enclosed sports cars during these years, but few reflected such an obviously split personality in their visual design. Above the belt line, the car is a sober two door sedan. Below the belt line, the cycle fenders and external exhaust scream "weekend racer"... a bit like somebody a wearing sport jacket and tie over jogging shorts. After 1936 Bertelli left, and new management under Gordon Sutherland concentrated on touring cars, including a streamlined prototype saloon called the Atom designed by Claude Hill. That was in 1939; then war interrupted testing.
In 1947, machine tool maker David Brown saw an ad in the Times with a car company for sale, went for a drive in the prototype Atom, and bought Aston Martin. He asked for a sports convertible to be designed for the Atom chassis, but felt the Hill-designed pushrod inline 4 was too tame for the resulting 2 Litre Sports shown below.
Brown was right. To survive at all at its heady price altitude, Aston Martin needed a performance engine. Luckily, Brown was able to buy Lagonda Motors later that same year, and gain the rights to its new twin overhead cam inline six, which had been designed by W.O. Bentley. As the decade ended, he had Frank Feeley design an aerodynamic coupe body around the 2.6 liter engine, placed it on a modified version of the 2 Litre Sports chassis and called the result the DB2. These cars performed well enough that in July 1949 a pre-production prototype finished 3rd in the Spa 24 hour race in Belgium. By 1950 Aston Martin Lagonda had a competitor to the Jaguar Xk120, also introduced in 1949, and it was in production. The first 49 cars built had the 3-part grille shown below, along with the large air extractor vents on the one-piece forward-tilting hood, formed out of aluminum sheets like the rest of the body. After releasing the DB2, Aston Martin Lagonda renamed the 2 Litre Sports the DB1.
In 1953 Aston introduced the DB2 / 4, which included a redesigned cabin with rear seats for children. The rear of the re-profiled fastback now featured a large, side-opening hatch with larger rear window. In 1955 the Mark II version appeared with squared-off rear fenders. Up front, the one-piece hood now opened along the shut line delineated by a chrome strip, and the sides of the fenders stayed put. A 165 hp version of the engine with larger valves was optional, but Jaguar was already offering 210 hp in the MC version of its XK140.
By 1956 AML had added a new notchback coupe with conventional trunk lid called the fixed head coupe, but only 34 of the 199 Mark II models were this style. Note that in this period, Aston was selling in the hundreds, while Jaguar was selling in the thousands. The reason was that Jaguars outperformed Astons on road and track; they'd won Le Mans twice by 1953. That carried more weight than tradition, especially in the critical US market. In England, some considered Jaguars a car for show-offs and cads; gangsters drove them and by the late Fifties, the police drove them too. For class-conscious customers in England, the latter might have been the last straw. Some people bought Astons because they had too much money to afford a Jaguar, socially anyway...
Perhaps because Astons denoted class to Alfred Hitchcock, he gave a Mark II drophead coupe to Tippi Hedren drive in his 1962 suspense feature, The Birds*. By the end of the tale, this car was in far better shape than many of the hapless residents of Bodega Bay, California, where much of the movie was filmed...
In 1957 Brown and his engineers introduced the Mark III version of the DB2 / 4. The inverted "T" of the grille was smoothed into the shape we know today, the twin-cam engine shared with the Lagonda sedan was punched out to 3 liters, and most of the cars had front disc brakes, something that showed up that year at all four wheels on Jaguars. At the rear, vertical Humber tail lights completed a handsome restyle. At nearly twice the price of a Jaguar in the US, however, the DB was still at a disadvantage. Road & Track tested one the next year and praised it, but called the price "astronomical."
While all this was going on, Aston Martin was trying to catch Jaguar on the race track as well. Jaguar had, by the end of the new DB's first year, won Le Mans five times, including a hat trick from '55 to '57. AML's first purpose-built road racer was '51 DB3; it looked like a lowered DB2 hot rod, which in fact it was. David Brown's team replaced it in '53 with the lighter, more graceful DB3S on a short 87 inch wheelbase and a 3 liter version of the Lagonda six and De Dion rear suspension. 31 cars were built, including 20 customer cars. The "works" cars raced by AML featured versions of this engine with an aluminum block and twin spark plugs per cylinder. The cars were known for their svelte looks and sweet handling, but lacked the torque and horsepower to cope with the Jaguars and Ferraris at Le Mans.
Something had to be done about that, and after an unsuccessful Le Mans run with a Lagonda powered with a new 4-cam V12 based around the six (it looked like a bigger DB3-S) David Brown ordered up a new design. The aluminum block engine was further refined, and designer Ted Cutting came up with a tubular chassis with 4 wheel disc brakes and a 5-speed transaxle for better weight distribution...luckily, David Brown was also a gearbox manufacturer. In 3 liter form the engine was good for 300 hp, and a more aerodynamic body was prepared, even lower and sleeker than the DB3-S in the background below.
John Wyer's team management skills, along with the driving skills of a Texan ex-chicken farmer named Carroll Shelby and co-driver Roy Salvadori, won Le Mans finally in 1959 with the DBR1. Aston Martin also won the Manufacturer's Championship that year after winning at Nurburgring and the Tourist Trophy. Aston Martin was rescued yet again...
Luckily for David Brown, AML already had a new GT car to exploit the long-awaited competition success by generating showroom traffic. It was the DB4, with alloy fastback body styled by Superleggera Touring in Italy, and a brand new 3.7 liter twin-cam six under the hood. Disc brakes were featured, and zero to 100 to zero was advertised as taking 20 seconds.
There was also a DB4-GT version with a shorter wheelbase (93 inches to the saloon's 98) and twin plugs per cylinder. AML built 75 of these cars.
There were also 25 even lighter, more aerodynamic DB4-GTs bodied by Zagato in Italy. Some, like the car shown below with its sliding side windows, were aimed at road racing...
..while others like this red car were outfitted for the road, with roll-up windows, radios and heaters. Bumpers were not a common feature.
There were other detail differences between these Zagato DBs. The car shwon above lacks the covered headlights of the others, because Italian law banned these for a brief time, forcing other makes like Lancia and Ferrari to adapt as well. Other Italian coachbuilders besides Touring and Zagato took an interest in the latest Aston chassis; in 1961 Bertone released the Jet* with DB4GT drivetrain, long after a small run of Bertone-bodied DB2s*. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, this silver car is the only DB4 with a steel body, and shared several design themes with Bertone's Ferrari 250GT SWB Speciale* from a year later...
AML pulled out of racing after that '59 championship, but dealers persuaded David Brown to allow his engineers one last endurance racing project, the DP212 below, based on a 4 liter version of the DB4GT...but lowered, lightened and streamlined. Graham Hill and Richie Ginther ran strongly at the 1962 Le Mans for 6 hours. Aston dealers would see their showroom traffic increase anyway, however, when a secret agent would drive the company to its greatest fame in Goldfinger, released in 1964. Bond's DB5 was only lightly revised from the DB4, but no matter. It would soon be the most popular Aston Martin yet built.
David Brown decided to hold off on the total redesign of the line like the Jet or the 212, and instead went with a tasteful remodel of the DB5 into the DB6, which allowed more room for rear seat passengers under the re-contoured fastback roofline with 3.7 inches more wheelbase , and a lower version of the Kamm tail with spoiler shown on the Project 212...
The car stayed in production from September 1965 through the end of 1970, overlapping with the DBS that appeared in 1967. The car shown here is a Mark II version, introduced in late 1969 with subtly-flared wheel arches to fit wider tires; the Mark II was also available with optional fuel injection. This was a planned feature of the Tadek Marek-designed V8 which was being readied for the first truly new Aston since the DB4...
In 1966 Touring of Milan built two prototypes of a new model engineered by AML's Dudley Gershon. He shortened the wheelbase, moved the engine back in the chassis for better handling, and sized the engine bay to take the new 4-cam, 5.3 liter V8 then being readied. The car was clearly aimed at customers checking out that generation's Ferraris, rather than the more conservative clientele who thought of Astons as easy-to-park Bentleys. David Brown, still in charge at Newport Pagnell, decided to cancel DBS project and produce a bigger, more conservative namesake styled by William Towns. The new car was not a lightweight at 3,500 pounds, and when it appeared in 1967 the V8 was still 3 years in the future. This decision had consequences, but that's a story for another day...
*Footnote: The following cars were featured in previous posts in this series. Dates are in parentheses: Singer Le Mans (3/28/18), Bertone-bodied Aston DB2s (10-15-16) and both Aston Martin DB4GT Bertone and Ferrari 250 SWB Speciale (12-26-18). And a couple of scenes from "The Birds" showed up in our essay on American gas stations as roadside attractions (11-9-19).
Photo Credits
Top & 2nd: wikimedia
3rd: bonhams.com
4th: autovehicle.info
5th & 6th: wikimedia
7th: bonhams.com
8th: imcdb.org
9th thru 11th: wikimedia
12th thru14th: Linda La Fond
15th: Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd.
16th & 17th: the author
18th, 19th & 22nd: Linda La Fond
20th & 21st: the author
23nd & 24th: uk.news.yahoo.com
Bottom: Touring Superleggera
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