Aston Martin UK New Aston Martin Cars, Prices & Reviews

About Aston Martin

Aston Martin has been going for more than a century now, founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford, and named after a hillclimb racing event at Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire. The company made sports cars both fast and pretty in the 1920s and 1930s, but hit fame in the post-war era as tractor maker David Brown bought the company (hence the DB badges) and a certain British super-spy got one as a company car (no, not Dangermouse). 

Since then, Aston Martin has been through a whole series of crises, collapsing into receivership at one point, before eventually being bought by Ford, then sold to Middle Eastern investors, and finally being bought by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, who also used the brand to re-name his F1 team. 

Since 2013, Aston Martin has had a tech-sharing agreement with Mercedes, and so it’s an AMG V8 turbo engine that powers the current Aston Martin Vantage coupe, bigger DB12 and DBX SUV. The classic Aston V12 engine is still in production, for the new Vanquish, but that’s actually a Ford engine, and has been around since the 1990s. 

The short-run Valour and Valiant V12 are almost cartoon versions of an Aston Martin, but also achingly cool. 

New models, such as the mid-engined hybrid Valhalla and the extreme Valkyrie (with a chassis by F1 designer Adrian Newey) have extended the Aston brand, but the company is still financially precarious at times, and it remains to be seen how deep Stroll’s pockets really are. 

As for the future, hopefully Aston Martin can get itself on a firmer financial footing, as there’s no doubting just how brilliant its cars are to drive, and how beautiful they are.