Aston Martin survived seven bankruptcies, once changing hands for just 101 pounds
James Bond's DB5 made Aston Martin a symbol of British glamour, but the balance sheet rarely matched the image. The firm has gone bust seven times. In 1972 David Brown cleared debts of five million pounds or more, then handed the whole company to a Birmingham consortium for 101 pounds.
Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford began in 1912 selling Singer cars from Callow Street in London and founded the marque the following year. Martin raced specials at Aston Hill near Aston Clinton, which supplied half the name, and the first Aston Martin was a four-cylinder Coventry-Simplex engine dropped into a 1908 Isotta Fraschini chassis. A proper first car appeared in March 1915, but war intervened: Martin joined the Admiralty and Bamford the Army Service Corps.
Bamford quit in 1920 and racing driver Louis Zborowski put in money. Cars built for the 1922 French Grand Prix went on to set speed and endurance records at Brooklands, yet the business went bankrupt in 1924 and Martin was forced out in 1925. Bert Bertelli and Bill Renwick then took charge, moved to Feltham, and from 1926 to 1937 Bertelli designed every new model, many bodied by his brother Enrico. Only 700 road cars were made from 1936 before the Second World War switched production to aircraft parts.
Rescue came in 1947 from David Brown's Huddersfield gear and machine tool company, founded in 1860, which also bought Lagonda for its W. O. Bentley-designed 2.6-litre engine. The DB line followed: the DB2 announced in April 1950, the Italian-styled DB4 in 1958, and the DB5 in 1963, which starred in Goldfinger the next year. Tadek Marek designed the six-cylinder engines from 1954 to 1965.
Trouble returned in 1974, when recession and California's emissions rules pushed it into receivership. A group including Peter Sprague of National Semiconductor bought it for 1.05 million pounds in April 1975, reopening the factory that September with 100 staff; Sprague said he had fallen for the factory rather than the cars. The V8 Vantage arrived in 1977, and in 1982 came a royal warrant from the Prince of Wales, now Charles III. Today the company has over 160 dealerships in 53 countries and builds cars on a 55-acre site at Gaydon, a former RAF base.
Source: Aston Martin
