In 1913, two friends in England—Lionel Martin, a race car fanatic and Robert Bamford, a mechanical genius—believed they could build a better car than anything that was out there and formed the auto company Bamford & Martin. Their first car rolled off the line in March of 1915. For a 100 years now, Aston Martin has been making polished cars fit for royalty, racecar studs and bespoke movie stars. TREATS! lifts the sleek hood of the “coolest brand in the world” and finds that a company known for its beauty also has a heart of steel. By Rob Hill
POWER. BEAUTY. SOUL.
The Aston Martin Design Studio in the bucolic hamlet of Gaydon, Warwickshire, UK, is exactly the kind of sleek automobile laboratory you’d expect from the most stylish and technology sophisticated car manufacturer on Earth. At first glance, however, its rush of glass, hallowed lighting, clean, sharp edges, honeyed woods, reflective pools and Italian-imported polished marble, seem almost alien here, as if Steve Jobs and James Bond had left their own private planets a century ago, partnered up, and decided to plant their aesthetic flag in London…but missed their mark by 90 miles northwest and landed in a sedate British country parish. The quaint village of less than 500 residents—with two pubs—isn’t exactly where you would expect to find an elegant pavilion designed by an intellectually driven Austrian architect obsessed with prefab modernism and environmentally friendly design. In fact, most of the people who live in Gaydon refer to the structure as “where those fancy cars are made.” Yes, those cars.
The pavilion is unflinchingly modern and uncompromising, its soft woods having been imported from forests in Switzerland, and its “green” sedum roof providing a sort of camouflage from the country Gods. And there’s hemp, too: The main wooden structure is insulated to a high specification using natural hemp insulation. Those inside the building—over 300 strong—have a much different take than the locals, often referring to it as “high-tech but human,” a “building with warmth,” “full of design intelligence,” and, of course, it “maximizes the feeling of transparency, natural light, and stunning views from all angles.” Dr. Ulrich Bez, Aston Martin’s freewheeling CEO and 24-hour brand ambassador—he green lit the studio—likes to say, “The Design Studio is a commitment of how important the design of new models is to the company’s future.”
Bez, who holds a doctorate in engineering from the University of Stuttgart and is a racecar driver himself, has been with Aston Martin for 13 years. If you aged Daniel Craig twenty-some-odd years and gave him equal doses of Terrence Stamp and a suave Austrian aristocrat, you’d have Bez. When he joined the company, he had an eye in expanding dealerships, going from 60 to over 120 worldwide, including Moscow, the Czech Republic and the Far East. His mantra for keeping the niche brand potent, both in craftsmanship and design, was to be more flexible, quick, creative and fast growing than his competitors. During Bez’s tenure, he not only has given the go-ahead to build the Design Studio, but also was pivotal in bringing the world The DB9 and V8 Vantage, two of AM’s most top-of-the-line cars. After five years at the helm, Aston Martin became profitable, and he helped take the company private (it was owned by Ford when Bez was hired.) And, of course, being the CEO of the coolest automobile brand in the world he gets a few perks. “Nearly everyday I’m driving something different,” he likes to point out. “I drive competitors cars, benchmark cars, and cars under development…of course most of this happens at night.”
If Bez was the fearless leader of AM in those crucial years, Henrik Fisker was its artiste. Or, as some would say, “Henrik was Bez’s Jonathan Ive.” (Ive is Apple’s Chief Designer.) Fisker, born in Denmark in 1963, and a graduate from the prestigious Art Center of Design, looks straight out of a Hansel and Gretel fable: fine, sandy-blonde hair, an amiable smile and a sort of Icelandic boyishness which can be disarming. Fisker, who left AM in 2004, and founded the hybrid luxury carmaker Fisker Automotive in 2007 (he was forced to resign as Chairman in March of 2013), has a keen appreciation of beauty and simplicity. “People want good-looking cars,” he firmly believes, and “they will sacrifice size and space to achieve that.” If nothing else, Fisker is a daring designer; he’s a man who lets his intuition guide his designs and is always willing to take a chance. Fisker’s favorite AM design is the V8 Vantage. The Vantage was able to achieve something that most cars can’t: retaining heritage yet futuristic at the same time.
“It really shows you can do a modernistic car, taking the cues from the history and delivering the heritage, but still do it modernly and do it successfully,” he has said of the car. “That’s what I feel, at least, that the car is.”
The man who replaced Fisker, Marek Reichman, who studied vehicle design at the college of Art in London, and has had stints at the Rover Group and BMW, first became chief designer at Ford in 1999. His values are simple: Power. Beauty. Soul. Soul? (“Soul for us is partly heritage.”) His first hands-on design at AM was 2006’s Rapide, the first four-door sedan ever released by AM. The car bucked the idea that a four-door sedan couldn’t be elegant, poised and high performance. It was a huge success. Then came the DBS, which played a starring role in the bond film Quantum Solace, followed by the stunning One-77, which was the co-star of Casino Royale —“I got to meet Daniel Craig and I said to him, ‘I’ve always dreamt of meeting you… not you but I was thinking of you as Bond.’ He actually looked at me and said, ‘My name’s Daniel, not James.’ I was like, ‘You’re right, you’re right’”—the Zagato, the Rapide S and, most recently, the Vanquish. (The One-77, which only 77 were made, is widely considered the most extraordinary luxury supercar ever built; each car took almost 2700 man-hours to produce.) The whole company—and the wider luxury car world—is still marveling about the 2013 Vanquish. The car goes from 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds and can reach a top speed of 183mph; its engine delivers a whopping 565 horsepower; its price tag a double-whopping $279,995. It’s a work of design and engineering art that was born at AM’s design incubator under, of course, the watchful eye of Reichman.
“It’s our best AM thus far in terms of design and engineering,” he has said. “It’s a real masterpiece of engineering and design.”
Lionel and Robert would be proud.
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