Aston Martin
The Bamford and Martin company was a small outfit based in Kensington building racing and competition cars, as well as a small number of road cars. After bancruptcy the company was purchased by Augustus "Bert" Bertelli and Bill Renwick, who were already partners in building their new 1.5 litre overhead camshaft engine. The new company was registered in 1926 as Aston Martin Motors Ltd, and set up in Feltham, not far from Brooklands track. A new company was set up in 1928 called Aston Martin Ltd, which absorbed into it the earlier Renwick & Bertelli Ltd, with Sidney Whitehouse becoming maor shareholder and Chairman. Enrico "Harry" Bertelli, the brother of "Bert", set up in the next door premises to take care of the coachbuilding manufacture, who also had that Italian flair for body shapes. The policy of continued competition use brought Aston Martin considerable publicity, the cars were expensive to build, most componets built "in house", and money was always tight. With the effects of the Wall Street crash biting hard, which finished off so many manufacturers (such as Bentley), Aston Martin was sold to Lance Prideaux-Brune who had held agencicies for various cars and knew of the Aston Martin quality since his works manager regularly competed with one. The company was kept going, with a full racing programme, until he sold out his interest to industrialist Sir Arthur Sutherland in 1933. Sutherlands son Gordon (a qualified engineer) became joint managing director with A.C. Bertelli, Renwick having left Aston Martin in 1931 and ending up in America. All this put Aston Martin on a firm financial footing, and with Sutherlands backing the most successful of the prewar models was made, the much improved third series of the 1.5 litre cars called the Mk2, of which 166 examples were built. As production of the new 2 litre 15/98 started in 1937, Bert Bertelli left the company due to disagreements, and Harry ceased making the bodywork the following year.
Post war, David Brown (a specialist in tractors and gear making) purchased Aston Martin in 1947 building a few 2 litre sports cars based on a prototype known as the Atom, that was developed during the war. Shortly after, the Bentley designed 6 cylinder engine that had been designed for Lagonda (now also David Brown owned) was used for the new DB2, this engine being made into a 3 litre for the DB2/4 Mk2 and Mk3. By 1958 a new and larger 3.7 litre engine was built for the DB4, which by 1963 had evolved into the DB5 with a 4 litre version of the same engine. A longer chassis and different styling led to the DB6 in 1965 which carried on in production to 1970. Concurrently with the DB6, another six cylinder model called the DBS , with much more "modern" bodywork, was introduced in 1967. From 1969 this DBS could be ordered with a 5.3 litre V8 engine, which unsurprisingly was called the DBS V8.
