In these pages you will read a record of the highs and lows of this very British make, notwithstanding the fact that a man with a very Italian name, Augustus Cesare Bertelli had a big hand in the design of the cars produced between 1926 and 1936. However, one has to note that a very French car with the tearing calico exhaust note was also designed by a man with an Italian name, Ettore Bugatti! Indeed, the story of both marques have a common link, Giuseppe Stefaninis FENC Isotta Fraschini. The late Griff Borgeson, one of the greatest researchers of the Bugatti story, explored and established the link between Bugatti and the Isotta in his book Bugatti The Dynamics Of Mythology and when Lionel Martin and his business partner, Robert Bamford, decided that they wished to make a high quality light car in 1912, they used an FENC IF chassis but powered by a Coventry Simplex engine of 1.4 litres. Bamford & Martin Ltd, was the little company run by the two cycling enthusiasts mentioned above which was based in West London. The next expression of their thinking appeared in 1914 when the first car with the name Aston-Martin was registered for use on the road. Why not a Bamford & Martin you may well ask? Well it was thought that it was important to appear early in any classified advertisements in the motoring press and Martin had enjoyed some success at a hill climb in Hertfordshire called Aston Hill, on the Rothschild estate near Tring. So Aston-Martin it was. Hidden behind the following record is the constant struggle by the various owners of the company to stay afloat not that they made things easy for themselves by spending a great deal time and money on racing while not making enough cars to cover the costs. Thus Bamford and Martin failed in 1925 but the name Aston-Martin was rescued by Messrs Renwick & Bertelli Ltd. who in turn got into difficulties in 1932. That there was a great depression in the worlds economies did nothing to help matters. Gordon Sutherland was the next to come to the rescue in 1933. He brought the company into the real world when he realised that to go racing, while great fun, needed to be backed up by a sound financial structure, which was not constantly drained by the apparent need to maintain a reputation by being seen in competition. By giving support to the many private owners, he did manage to keep the name before the public. This portfolio covers in some detail the life & adventures of early Aston Martin cars from 1921 to 1947. It looks at such classics as early 11.9hp cars, Le Mans, Mark II, Ulster & 2-litre variants. Included are road tests, new model reports & performance data.
