Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford had begun selling Singer cars together before deciding to build their own vehicles. Martin raced specials at Aston Hill near Aston Clinton, and the pair named their enterprise after that venue. The first Aston Martin was created by fitting a Coventry-Simplex engine to a 1908 Isotta Fraschini chassis; the first car to reach completion emerged from their Kensington premises in March 1915, but the First World War halted further production.
After the war the company was revitalised with funding from Count Louis Zborowski and produced cars that set speed and endurance records at Brooklands in 1922. Financial difficulties were persistent: the company went bankrupt in 1924, was rescued by Lady Charnwood, fell into trouble again in 1925, and was then taken over by Bill Renwick and Bert Bertelli, who renamed it Aston Martin Motors and moved it to Feltham. Between 1926 and 1937 Bertelli acted as both technical director and designer, producing a range of 1.5-litre and 2-litre sports cars that competed successfully at Le Mans. The company concentrated on road cars from 1936, building around 700 cars before the Second World War brought production to a halt.
In 1947, David Brown — head of a Huddersfield gear and machine tools company — purchased Aston Martin and separately acquired Lagonda, gaining access to a 2.6-litre engine designed by W. O. Bentley. The two marques shared resources at Newport Pagnell. Brown initiated the famous DB series: the DB2 announced in 1950, followed by the DB2/4, DB Mark III, and the Italian-styled DB4 in 1958. The DB4 led to the DB5 in 1963, an automobile that became an icon of British culture after its appearance as James Bond's car in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The six-cylinder engines used in the DB cars from 1954 to 1965 were designed by Tadek Marek.
In 1972, David Brown paid off all company debts and sold the business to a Birmingham investment consortium for £101. Financial instability continued: a worldwide recession and the cost of meeting California emissions regulations pulled Aston Martin into receivership again at the end of 1974.
The company was sold in April 1975 for £1.05 million to a group including American businessman Peter Sprague and Toronto hotelier George Minden. Victor Gauntlett became executive chairman in 1981 after acquiring a stake through Pace Petroleum. Gauntlett negotiated a return of the James Bond association in 1986 for The Living Daylights, having previously supplied his personal Vantage for that filming. In 1987, Ford purchased a 75 per cent stake in Aston Martin, later acquiring full ownership. Ford placed the company in its Premier Automotive Group, invested in new manufacturing, and opened a purpose-built factory at Gaydon, Warwickshire in 2003 on the site of a former RAF V Bomber airbase. This era produced the DB7, the company's best-selling model to that point with more than 6,000 built, and the V12-engined Vanquish in 2001.
In March 2007 a consortium led by Prodrive chairman David Richards purchased Aston Martin from Ford for £475 million. Italian private equity fund Investindustrial acquired a 37.5 per cent stake in December 2012. In January 2020, Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll led a consortium that injected £500 million into the company, with Stroll becoming chairman. Swiss magnate Ernesto Bertarelli and Mercedes-AMG team principal Toto Wolff joined the consortium. In 2020 Aston Martin entered a technology partnership with Mercedes-Benz Group, which gradually increased its equity stake to 20 per cent. Geely acquired a stake in 2022, eventually reaching 17 per cent, making it the third-largest shareholder behind Stroll's Yew Tree consortium and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Aston Martin participated in Formula One as a constructor in 1959 and 1960, entering six races without scoring a point. The interwar Le Mans programme established the marque's sporting credentials, and it returned to sports car racing during the Gauntlett era: a Tickford-engined Nimrod Group C car finished seventh at the 1982 Le Mans. In December 2003, a new division called Aston Martin Racing was created in partnership with Prodrive to manage the DBR9 programme in GT-class sports car racing, including at Le Mans.
The most significant modern motorsport development came in January 2020, when it was announced that the Racing Point Formula One team would be rebranded as the Aston Martin F1 Team from the 2021 season, backed by Lawrence Stroll. The Aston Martin AMR21 was unveiled in March 2021, marking the marque's return to Formula One after a 61-year absence, with the team racing in a modern iteration of Aston Martin's historic British racing green livery.
The company survived seven bankruptcies in its first century. Production was for most of its history small-scale and hand-built; under Ford ownership methods were modernised and annual output reached record levels. The Newport Pagnell plant, home of production from 1955, rolled out its last car in July 2007, with all volume production relocated to Gaydon. The St Athan factory in Wales, opened in 2019, serves as the production site of the DBX SUV. Aston Martin's grand touring cars, with their combination of high performance, elegant coachwork and the continuing association with James Bond, have made the marque a recognised symbol of British luxury.
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