The Aston Legend

I became interested in motor racing during the one brief period when Aston Martin was really something special. There was the DBR1, the DB4, especially when fitted with the glorious Zagato body and, of course, there was James Bond’s car in Goldfinger. Somehow it was easy to overlook the fact that the DBR4 Formula One car was a turkey and its successor, the DBR5, a stuffed turkey.

In the 1980s, I interviewed a show biz star who loved Astons and he went on about the wood, the leather, and the tradition. These seemed admirable virtues for the reading room of a gentlemen’s club, but not necessarily qualities I looked for in a sports car. The V-8-engined cars of the 1980s were crude, cumbersome, and not that pleasurable to drive. My interviewee was knowledgeable, but he had fallen for the legend.