p28-30 Brown Hurl Iss05
13/2/07
01:42
Page 30
hurlingham [classic car]
30
1920s were also wooden-sided (what the Americans call ‘woodies’), although that later died out. Which is just as well, because a half-timbered Aston Martin would not have worked at all. Once he took delivery of his shooting brake, David Brown found he had unleashed a monster. Every time he turned up in the shooting brake at polo, he was pestered by friends and clients who wanted one. This was no ordinary saloon-to-estate conversion: it was beautifully and sympathetically done, and there are those who think it outshines even the original. So Aston made a dozen more, using the Harold Radford company in Hammersmith (demand at Newport Pagnell for the standard car was so high that it couldn’t cope with one-off specials). These now fetch up to £140,000 (a well-loved standard DB5 can be had for £80-90,000). The shooting brake wasn’t perfect. It lost some rigidity because of the removal of the rear panels and so had a degree of ‘scuttle shake’ on rough surfaces, although that was a small price to pay for such an unusual yet practical conveyance. High as it was, however, the final purchase bill didn’t even cover the factory’s costs. This was effectively a hand-built car that was taken apart and reassembled once more. David Brown’s version of Aston Martin was never purely about turning a profit, as Clark Gable is said to have discovered during a personal factory tour with Sir David. ‘Well, I like the cars,’ Gable declared when the visit was over, ‘and I'd like to buy one, but the publicity value of me owning one will be so great, I'd like to pay cost price.’ ‘Well thank you very much, Mr Gable,’ replied the laconic Sir David. ‘Most of our customers pay about £2,000 less than that.’ When the DB6 came along, Radford again produced a few much sought-after shooting brakes – seven in all, most of which went to the USA, although one of them became the Brown family conveyance. Sir David sold Aston Martin in 1972 – a wily move. New safety standards and the oil crisis devastated the luxury sports car market in the USA, and Aston limped on under several owners. The cars became ugly and unreliable (the hi-tech wedge-shaped Lagonda being widely regarded as a disaster), and the brand lost its cachet, although the DB5 never did. A few hugely expensive shooting brakes were still made by coachbuilder Beat Roos in Switzerland, but it looked to be all over for the marque. Ford, who bought part of the company in 1987 and then all of it in 1994 (the year after Sir David’s death) were Aston’s unlikely saviours. Purists were outraged at first, but Ford cannily recreated the old allure, first with the DB7, then the DB9, the superb yet affordable Vantage, and now Daniel Craig’s muscular DBS. The Volante convertible versions are just about the most stunning ragtops on the road. But the problem David Brown noted still
Previous page The majestic DB9 Volante, and ‘DB’ himself Above and left The car’s the star – the DB5 as shooting brake and Bond classic
Brown’s Aston Martin was never purely about turning a profit, as Clark Gable discovered to his cost
exists, even in the eye-wateringly fast top-ofthe-range Vanquish S. Sometimes, a seriously sporting chap (and the majority of customers are men) simply needs more luggage than a sleek two-door sports car can cope with. Hence the Rapide. This is a DB9based four-door, four-seat (albeit cramped in the back) coupe, with a hi-tech glass roof, electrically-operated folding rear seats and a hatchback. So there is a very decent load space – no problems with mallets, boots, guns or dogs. But it also comes with blistering performance from the V12, 5.9 litre, 490bhp engine which generates the gloriously throaty roar of the modern Aston as standard. Furthermore, despite the longer wheelbase and the changed roofline, it is
still a handsome prospect and, thanks to a brilliantly engineered chassis, has none of the jitteriness of earlier attempts at what the Americans would call a ‘station wagon’. It is, in short, a worthy successor to the DB5 shooting brake. What it isn’t yet is a reality. The Rapide is still a concept car and, if it does go into production, is likely to cost well over £100,000. But there are already customers clamouring to put their name down on a waiting list that doesn’t yet exist. I’d like to think that, if he were still around, Sir David Brown would be the first to sign on the dotted line. The company (which, although healthier than ever, is actually for sale, Ford needing to retrench) is still agonising over just how much of a market there is worldwide for such a beast. They shouldn’t. The Los Angeles branch of the Aston Martin Owner’s Club sponsors polo matches at the Will Rogers ground and the car park on those days is a marvellous sight to behold, full of every generation of Aston. I suspect that, were the Rapide to go into production, this practical hatchback rocket would have a very healthy presence there indeed. As Sir David demonstrated, polo and shooting brakes really were made for each other.
