BY TIM LAPPEN
TheHAUTE LISTAuto
ASTON MARTIN DBS SUPERLEGGERA COUPE Superlight, Superfast and Superfun WHEN I WAS A KID, THE ULTIMATE TOY WAS THE SCALEXTRIC SLOT-CAR SET.
Each car’s distinctive grille and its country-color livery made for the same resplendent
The British company manufactured several types of motorized toys, including cars
hues on the slot-car track as they did on the world’s Formula One circuits. And the
which ran on clockwork motors; but, in 1957, their world (and mine) changed when
Aston Martins in British-racing green (BRG) had an unusual mouth. Marek Reichman,
they created an electric toy car which ran on a track and which allowed the player to
Aston Martin’s chief creative officer, said that, “If you were being very simplistic, you
control the speed. No, I didn’t get such a toy, but my luck was only one-degree-of-sepa-
could say it was a box pushing out of an organic oval shape, with smoothed corners.”
ration. Don, my next-door neighbor and best friend, was one of four boys in his family,
The Robb Report simply refers to it as the “moustache.” Either way, it started with the
so his parents apparently justified the Christmas purchase by amortizing it among the
form-follows-function approach to allow as much airflow into the tall radiator at the
four brothers. Luckily for me, Don was the oldest, so he and I pretty much had the run
center, with side areas to help cool the front brakes. Whatever it’s called, one can tell
of the house when it came to the shiny new Scalextric.
in an instant that’s it’s an Aston Martin approaching. Similarly, we kids could tell which
What does this have to do with Aston Martin? In those years, the primo Formula One racing machines were Ferrari, Mercedes, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, and Aston Martin.
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slot-car was the Aston, one of our BRG favorites. Thus began my lifelong love of all things created by the storied brand.
