Luxury Insider

Luxury Insider was honoured to be given a peek into the hallowed halls of Aston Martin. AMIR ALI takes a tour through its cutting edge facilities at Gaydon, to find out what is it about the Aston marque that makes it so special.

When you acquire an Aston Martin motorcar, you are not just the keeper of an exceptional automobile. You are in fact buying into a very rich, sometimes tumultuous history, albeit one whose cumulative effects have been positive on this reinvigorated marque. This was most apparent to me at during a recent tour of the factory, where timeless craftsmanship meets modern materials and advanced technology to create some of the world's finest cars.

In the words of Aston's CEO, Herr Dr. Ulrich Bez, history without a future is just that, history; history with a future represents heritage. He is certainly no stranger to that concept. Having brought innovative ideas and new thinking to Porsche in the early 1990s whilst helping to develop their watershed 993 model, he has, since 2000, been key in the reversal of fortunes of the once quaint and slow-moving Aston Martin.

Though steeped in history, at that time Aston Martin was selling poorly and primarily to a local clientèle, which was doing it no favors from a fiscal point of view. Under the stewardship of then-new owners Ford, Dr. Bez was brought in to save the legendary name from disappearing completely in spite of the fact the DB7 was the most successful Aston ever, with 7000 units sold during its lifetime. In order to fully understand just how Aston Martin was revived, we go back to the very beginning to its foundations.