In the three-liter class, one of sports racing’s most competitive, Britain’s Aston Martin fancied its chances in international racing from 1951 through 1959. It was a saga of rising fortunes that culminated in the beautiful DBR1/300 of 1956-’59.
On the 26th of May 1957, English cars and a gent from Huddersfield named David Brown attained a long-sought goal. Since the war this short, bespectacled industrialist had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on machinery to perpetuate the name “Aston Martin.” On that day he had the pleasure of watching his latest Aston racing car trample the cream of Italy’s sports machines on one of the world’s most testing road courses: the Nürburgring. His drivers were the impeccably fast Tony Brooks and newcomer Noel Cunningham-Reid, young men who had been groomed for Aston’s racing program by team manager Reg Parnell and his predecessor John Wyer, now general manager of David Brown Automobiles.
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