Title: Aston Martin the Legend
Description: Aston Martin — suppliers of handbuilt fast cars to H.R.H. Prince Charles and James Bond - has had a chequered career over its 80-year life. The company has had many enthusiastic owners, all of whom have left Feltham or Newport Pagnell poorer than when they arrived. But,-despite all the financial ups-and-downs, the cars have retained their essential charisma.
With superb colour photographs, this book follows the Aston Martin story - from the pre-war days of the stark, open 2-seaters with their 1.5-litre 'fours', through the 'fifties and 'sixties reign of the evocative DB series with their raucous twin-cam 'sixes' and on into the 'seventies and 'eighties, where the big V8-powered luxury GT cars ruled the roost. The production story continues with the cars for the 'nineties and beyond — the latest V8 and the stunning DB7. Racing has always improved the Aston Martin breed - the marque won the World Sports Car Championship in 1959 - so factory competition cars are also featured.
This is a fascinating story of high performance in every decade, but particularly of one small British company's ongoing determination to challenge the best of the world's supercars.
People: About the Author. Michael Bowler was a director of Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd, from 1983-90. He has experienced life on the workshop floor in Newport Pagnell and Milan (building Zagato Astons) and was closely involved in the 'eighties racing challenges, as a director of both Nimrod and Aston race teams. As journalist and former custodian of an Aston Martin collection, he has also driven every post-war model, including the racers, and a number of the pre-war cars too. He is thus uniquely qualified to write authoritatively on Aston Martins. Following an engineering education, he spent 17 years with IPC, first on Motor magazine and then, in 1973, he founded Classic Cars magazine. In 1981 he became PR Manager of Aston shareholders, Pace petroleum, moving into Aston Martin two years later. After the short-lived Aston Martin AMR-1 project, he left to manage the creation of the Yamaha Grand Prix Supercar, OX99-11. He returned to journalism in 1993, and now also runs the 96 Club which arranges track days for owners of high performance cars.
Time periods: 1914 - 1990