Aston Martin: A Legacy of Speed and Style

It all started in 1913 when Lionel Johnson, a British businessman, founded Aston Martin. The company's first car, the 7-liter Aston Martin, was released in 1922. However, it wasn't until 1977 that Aston Martin became synonymous with speed and style with the release of the DBS V8. This car had a 5.3 liter V8 engine and made an impressive 390 horsepower. Its sleek design and powerful performance earned it the title of Britain's first supercar.

The DBS V8 was featured in several films, including the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me". The car's agility and speed were put to the test as it went toe-to-toe with the Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari Daytona, and Porsche 911. Aston Martin's success with the DBS V8 led to the company building this model up until 1989.

During the same period, Aston Martin produced the wedge-shaped Lagonda luxury sedan. This car was a marvel of its time, featuring LED digital instruments, touch-sensitive switches, and pop-up headlights. The Lagonda was the world's fastest production four-seater and one of the most expensive sedans in the world when it was first introduced.

In 1987, Ford took a stake in Aston Martin, which led to changes in the company's direction. In 1988, the Virage was introduced, marking the first new Aston Martin model produced in over 20 years. The DB line was also set to return with the upcoming DB7, but the company needed more money to make it happen.

Ford bought the rest of Aston Martin and added it to the Premier Auto Group, along with other recent acquisitions such as Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo. The DB7 became Aston Martin's most successful model to date, with over 7,000 units produced by the time the DB9 was released in 2001.

The DB9 featured an impressive 5.9-liter V12 engine, making it Aston Martin's new flagship model and their fastest production car ever. Over the course of its 90-year history, Aston Martin built fewer than 15,000 cars, but things really took off in the 21st century, with over 45,000 units produced since 2003.

The V8 Vantage reappeared in 2005, and Aston partnered with Pro-Drive to create a motorsport division. This marked an official return to racing for the company, but it wasn't long before Ford decided to dismantle the PAG group and sell the brands off.

Aston Martin's resurgence was underway, and there was enough money to develop an ultra-exclusive car - the One-77. Production was limited to 77 units, with each car featuring handcrafted aluminum body panels on a carbon fiber chassis. The One-77 boasted a 7.3-liter V12 engine producing 750 horsepower, and its top speed reached an astonishing 220 mph.

Fast forward to today, and Aston Martin continues to push the boundaries of speed and style. Their latest creation is the Valkyrie, a hypercar developed in partnership with Red Bull Racing and legendary designer Adrian Newey. Powered by a 1,100-horsepower V12 engine, the Valkyrie features some of the most advanced aerodynamics ever seen on a road-going car.

The Valkyrie is track-only only, but it's clear that Aston Martin has truly outdone itself with this creation. If you're one of the lucky few who get to see the Valkyrie in action, you might even be able to take it home - thanks to an ongoing partnership with OMEGA.

To celebrate the release of the Valkyrie, OMEGA is offering a chance for fans to win their very own Aston Martin Vantage. The winning car comes complete with taxes and shipping costs covered. But that's not all - every donation made to support the Folds of Honor organization will also be entered into a drawing to win this incredible Aston Martin.

So what are you waiting for? Check out OMEGA's website and enter your chance to win an Aston Martin Vantage today!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's the often broke British brand that makes beautiful race bred beasts that bond brazenly borrows the beat baddies and bashed bumpers a badge whose ownership has changed hands more times than sixpence in Camden Market on Boxing Day but has remained the pinnacle of luxury and performance Gavin at this is everything you need to know to get up to speed on Aston Martin you want to win an Aston Martin we partnered with omae's again to bring you this special episode of up to speed stick around to the end to find out how you can win or go to amaze calm slash Vantage right now to enter actually don't go right now what's the rest of the episode it was 1913 in a small workshop in London where two auto enthusiast Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford decided that boring stuff like selling cars and working as Mateen --ax wasn't their cup of tea they fancy themselves racecar drivers after all they competed in the Aston Hill Climb in the village of Aston Clinton oh that's big done with other people's cars let's build our own car can we talk about this after the race but don't want to talk about this no stop being a fuzzy wrinkled I am NOT the weaker Martin bully bully bantha you know that's what they call you at the Cricket Club after all of that Bamford and Martin had formed a car company and put a 4-cylinder Coventry simplex engine into a 1908 I saw the Franchini by 1915 their their first car known as the coal-scuttle because it looked like a coal scuttle you don't know what a coal scuttle is because you were born in this century well it's a bucket for coal it's a bucket for coal the official name however was Aston Martin a lovely sounding combination of Lionel's last name and their favourite Hill Climb it about a bad timing World War one came knocking on their doors gentlemen there's someone at the door for you they sound quite angry peace pause who had come calling on a Sunday Martin enlisted with the Admiralty while Bamford went into the army they sold all their production materials and put the business on hold for a few years by 1919 they were both back home designing a new car in a new shop a Bamford bailed out within a year in 1920 wealthy young race car driver count Louie is a brow ski swooped in with some cash to help Martin build his car you've probably never heard of a brow ski but you might have heard of one of his other cars Chitty Chitty Bang Bang seriously it was a real racing car two years later Martin D budded three 1.5 litre race cars in the French Grand Prix all of which went on to set world speed records and endurance records the green pea the razor blade and the Halford special they also built 55 cars to sell but the company was out of money just two years later this time some rich old bird named Lady Charnwood bought it out and put her little baby son on the company board apparently that was a mistake because the company went belly-up a year later just like my goldfish just did this morning I am powering through but I'll tell you all about the factory closed and a tired and frustrated Lionel Martin called it quits he went to work in his family's lime and chalk business full-time well I'm in chalk what are they gorons lady Charnwood tried to save the company again in 1926 with two new investors bill Renwick and Augustus Bert Bert le they officially named it Aston Martin Motors and started building mostly open two-seater sports cars and race cars there was the International the lamothe the Ulster just like I got in my tummy this speed model and they did very well in the races including l'amour and Mille Miglia racing ain't cheap and more money troubles with the young company in 1932 investors kept it afloat and they focused solely on street cars starting in 36 then they ran into another snag I'm night each on would Wald walk to the door they need a plane piss pause don't they know it's Sunday so Aston Martin began making airplane parts for the British war effort despite material shortages in 1939 boss man Gordon Sutherland commissioned one of the world's first fully functional concept cars the Aston Martin atom they managed to build a comfortable and lightweight performance sedan with modern tubular space frame design sutherland registered the atom concept car and personally drove it over 100,000 miles during the war future aston martins were all inspired by the atom I also realised that Colby is definitely gonna use Donald Sutherland for this man with Europe in shambles business did not look promising Aston Martin made only 680 cars during the war and Sutherland decided to sell he advertised Aston Martin as a high-class motor business in the newspaper he put his car company in the classifieds in the newspaper David Brown owner of a ginormous engineering company that dealt in gearboxes and tractors took the atom concept for a drive in 1947 and promptly decided to buy Aston Martin he also picked up struggling luxury maker lagonda and it's Bentley designed engines forming Aston Martin Lagonda as it still exists today the revived company put a few new aston martin 2-liter sports on the road in 1948 that was the name of the car but nowadays it's referred to as the db1 the first of the famous DB series d B as in David Brown duh the DB 2 was the first Aston a feature an inline 6-cylinder engine and was super successful in racing they wanted to get away from the Bentley Motors though so they hired Polish engineer to deck merrick to help design their own hey how many polish engineers does it take to design an Aston Martin engine no you go ahead Warren was brilliant the beautiful Italian style db4 debuted at the 1958 London Motor Show the public started to take notice of the small British automaker they were drooling over that DB poor baby they was like I can't stop this bit from around my mouth is so good Aston Martin was still heavily involved in racing - and it's rumoured that Brown only bought the company because he really wanted to race in 1959 the dbr1 won the World Sports Car Championship with three consecutive wins at the 24 Hours of the mall the Nurburgring and the international tourist trophy a feat only previously accomplished once byfa daddy yeah I heard of him the first of five original DBR ones raced by Stirling Moss and Carroll Shelby sold for twenty two point five million dollars in 2017 making it the most expensive British car in history twenty two point five million dollars that's a lot of mojo baby last factory built Aston Martin race car was the 1963 DP 215 competition prototype it was built on the db4 GT chassis in just two months to compete with faladi at Lamar though it was originally supposed to have a v8 it ended up with a Torquay four liter inline six mated to an old 5-speed transmission from the slower dbr1 that proved to be a little bit of a weak link and the failed after just three hours on the bright side it was the first car to break the 300 kilometer an hour barrier on the Mulsanne straight ultimately hitting 319 kilometers per okay side note I'm saying kilometers because it's a British car on a European course don't get used to it anyway there's only one of these bad boys in the world which is why some lucky bloke had to pay 20 1.5 million dollars to get his hands on if Aston thought the db4 was popular it was nothing compared to the amount of attention they got when James Bond drove onto the movie screens in this stunning silver db5 in Goldfinger Barnes db5 was equipped with revolving license plates GPS tyre slashers oil slick machine guns and most importantly an ejector seat almost overnight Aston Martin's became some of the most desirable cars in the world the four seat DBS debuted in 1967 and sported the company's first v8 in 1969 but the company still wasn't making any money Aston Martin made some awesome cars during the David Brown years but he couldn't keep it going any more without turning a profit he sold it in 1972 and then the new owners had to sell it again because of the gas crisis banned they get knocked down but then they get up again they're never gonna keep him down you know they take a vodka train they take a whiskey drink they take a lager drink the muscular v8 Vantage came out in 1977 it had a 5.3 liter v8 and made 390 her Spurs earning it the title of Britain's first supercar it was sexy it was in this Bond film it went toe-to-toe at the Lamborghini Countach the Ferrari Daytona and the Porsche 911 and often it came out on top it was so good Aston Martin built it all the way up through 1989 during the same time period the company also made the wedge-shaped of ganda luxury sedan it looks sick it was the first car to have led digital instruments and had other futuristic features like touch sensitive switches and pop-up freaking headlights on a giant sedan I love this thing when it was new the hand-built Lagonda was the world's fastest production four seater and one of the most expensive sedans in the world I own four of them in 1987 Ford took a stake in the in 1988 the Virage was the first new Aston Martin produced in 20 years the DB line was also set to return with the upcoming DB 7 and they needed a lot more money to make it happen so Ford bought the rest of Aston and added it to the Premier auto group along with other recent acquisitions Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo the db7 was Aston Martin's most successful model to date with more than 7,000 built by the time the db9 came out in 2001 the 5.9 liter v12 vanquish became Aston Martin's new flagship and their fastest production model ever in terms of top speed in the entire 90 year stretch between 1913 and 2003 Aston Martin built fewer than 15,000 cars but things really turned around in the 21st century and over 45,000 cars have been made since 2003 the v8 Vantage reappeared in 2005 and Aston partnered with pro-drive to create a motorsport division and make an official return to racing but it wasn't long before four decided to dismantle the P AG group and sell the brands off every time they think they got to figured out their dad is like okay I'm gonna leave forever hey smash that like button if you hate your dad but Ashton's were still selling well and now that they were selling well there was enough money to develop an uber expensive Aston Martin one-77 production was limited to 77 cars I have three of them with price tags around 1.5 million bones they were made with handcrafted aluminium body panels on carbon fiber chassis with power coming from a 7.3 litre v12 making 750 her Spurs with a top speed of 220 mouths how did you live up to speed uh-huh James this is Aston Martin hate to bother you but we're just calling make sure you're not forgetting this signet I'm not no I'm not closing episode with this signet it does make sense chronologically look this episode is almost done and I'm not ending with the Signet alright the Aston Martin Valkyrie is Astin's most advanced car in the company's history developed with the help from the Red Bull Formula One team and legendary race car designer Adrian Newey the Valkyrie is powered by an 1,100 horsepower v12 and sticks to the road with the help from the craziest aerodynamics ever devised it's so crazy that it's not even street-legal track only baby yeah yeah we have partnered with omae's again and this time we're giving away an aston martin you like all the aston martins we talked about did you like looking at this sweet sweet car well you could win one just like it not only are you entering to win a sweet Aston Martin Vantage with taxes and shipping covered but every donation also supports a great cause folds of Honor is an organization that provides educational scholarships to spouses and children of America's fallen and disabled servicemen so go to omae's comm slash Vantage and enter today you can win an Aston Martin just like this one thank you so much for watching hit the subscribe button you want to buy a shirt shop that doughnut the media follow me on Instagram anteus bumpy but a doughnut at donut media watch this episode of up speed watch this episode a wheelhouse I love you know any comments and tell me something sweet sponsor me sponsor me deodorant companiesit's the often broke British brand that makes beautiful race bred beasts that bond brazenly borrows the beat baddies and bashed bumpers a badge whose ownership has changed hands more times than sixpence in Camden Market on Boxing Day but has remained the pinnacle of luxury and performance Gavin at this is everything you need to know to get up to speed on Aston Martin you want to win an Aston Martin we partnered with omae's again to bring you this special episode of up to speed stick around to the end to find out how you can win or go to amaze calm slash Vantage right now to enter actually don't go right now what's the rest of the episode it was 1913 in a small workshop in London where two auto enthusiast Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford decided that boring stuff like selling cars and working as Mateen --ax wasn't their cup of tea they fancy themselves racecar drivers after all they competed in the Aston Hill Climb in the village of Aston Clinton oh that's big done with other people's cars let's build our own car can we talk about this after the race but don't want to talk about this no stop being a fuzzy wrinkled I am NOT the weaker Martin bully bully bantha you know that's what they call you at the Cricket Club after all of that Bamford and Martin had formed a car company and put a 4-cylinder Coventry simplex engine into a 1908 I saw the Franchini by 1915 their their first car known as the coal-scuttle because it looked like a coal scuttle you don't know what a coal scuttle is because you were born in this century well it's a bucket for coal it's a bucket for coal the official name however was Aston Martin a lovely sounding combination of Lionel's last name and their favourite Hill Climb it about a bad timing World War one came knocking on their doors gentlemen there's someone at the door for you they sound quite angry peace pause who had come calling on a Sunday Martin enlisted with the Admiralty while Bamford went into the army they sold all their production materials and put the business on hold for a few years by 1919 they were both back home designing a new car in a new shop a Bamford bailed out within a year in 1920 wealthy young race car driver count Louie is a brow ski swooped in with some cash to help Martin build his car you've probably never heard of a brow ski but you might have heard of one of his other cars Chitty Chitty Bang Bang seriously it was a real racing car two years later Martin D budded three 1.5 litre race cars in the French Grand Prix all of which went on to set world speed records and endurance records the green pea the razor blade and the Halford special they also built 55 cars to sell but the company was out of money just two years later this time some rich old bird named Lady Charnwood bought it out and put her little baby son on the company board apparently that was a mistake because the company went belly-up a year later just like my goldfish just did this morning I am powering through but I'll tell you all about the factory closed and a tired and frustrated Lionel Martin called it quits he went to work in his family's lime and chalk business full-time well I'm in chalk what are they gorons lady Charnwood tried to save the company again in 1926 with two new investors bill Renwick and Augustus Bert Bert le they officially named it Aston Martin Motors and started building mostly open two-seater sports cars and race cars there was the International the lamothe the Ulster just like I got in my tummy this speed model and they did very well in the races including l'amour and Mille Miglia racing ain't cheap and more money troubles with the young company in 1932 investors kept it afloat and they focused solely on street cars starting in 36 then they ran into another snag I'm night each on would Wald walk to the door they need a plane piss pause don't they know it's Sunday so Aston Martin began making airplane parts for the British war effort despite material shortages in 1939 boss man Gordon Sutherland commissioned one of the world's first fully functional concept cars the Aston Martin atom they managed to build a comfortable and lightweight performance sedan with modern tubular space frame design sutherland registered the atom concept car and personally drove it over 100,000 miles during the war future aston martins were all inspired by the atom I also realised that Colby is definitely gonna use Donald Sutherland for this man with Europe in shambles business did not look promising Aston Martin made only 680 cars during the war and Sutherland decided to sell he advertised Aston Martin as a high-class motor business in the newspaper he put his car company in the classifieds in the newspaper David Brown owner of a ginormous engineering company that dealt in gearboxes and tractors took the atom concept for a drive in 1947 and promptly decided to buy Aston Martin he also picked up struggling luxury maker lagonda and it's Bentley designed engines forming Aston Martin Lagonda as it still exists today the revived company put a few new aston martin 2-liter sports on the road in 1948 that was the name of the car but nowadays it's referred to as the db1 the first of the famous DB series d B as in David Brown duh the DB 2 was the first Aston a feature an inline 6-cylinder engine and was super successful in racing they wanted to get away from the Bentley Motors though so they hired Polish engineer to deck merrick to help design their own hey how many polish engineers does it take to design an Aston Martin engine no you go ahead Warren was brilliant the beautiful Italian style db4 debuted at the 1958 London Motor Show the public started to take notice of the small British automaker they were drooling over that DB poor baby they was like I can't stop this bit from around my mouth is so good Aston Martin was still heavily involved in racing - and it's rumoured that Brown only bought the company because he really wanted to race in 1959 the dbr1 won the World Sports Car Championship with three consecutive wins at the 24 Hours of the mall the Nurburgring and the international tourist trophy a feat only previously accomplished once byfa daddy yeah I heard of him the first of five original DBR ones raced by Stirling Moss and Carroll Shelby sold for twenty two point five million dollars in 2017 making it the most expensive British car in history twenty two point five million dollars that's a lot of mojo baby last factory built Aston Martin race car was the 1963 DP 215 competition prototype it was built on the db4 GT chassis in just two months to compete with faladi at Lamar though it was originally supposed to have a v8 it ended up with a Torquay four liter inline six mated to an old 5-speed transmission from the slower dbr1 that proved to be a little bit of a weak link and the failed after just three hours on the bright side it was the first car to break the 300 kilometer an hour barrier on the Mulsanne straight ultimately hitting 319 kilometers per okay side note I'm saying kilometers because it's a British car on a European course don't get used to it anyway there's only one of these bad boys in the world which is why some lucky bloke had to pay 20 1.5 million dollars to get his hands on if Aston thought the db4 was popular it was nothing compared to the amount of attention they got when James Bond drove onto the movie screens in this stunning silver db5 in Goldfinger Barnes db5 was equipped with revolving license plates GPS tyre slashers oil slick machine guns and most importantly an ejector seat almost overnight Aston Martin's became some of the most desirable cars in the world the four seat DBS debuted in 1967 and sported the company's first v8 in 1969 but the company still wasn't making any money Aston Martin made some awesome cars during the David Brown years but he couldn't keep it going any more without turning a profit he sold it in 1972 and then the new owners had to sell it again because of the gas crisis banned they get knocked down but then they get up again they're never gonna keep him down you know they take a vodka train they take a whiskey drink they take a lager drink the muscular v8 Vantage came out in 1977 it had a 5.3 liter v8 and made 390 her Spurs earning it the title of Britain's first supercar it was sexy it was in this Bond film it went toe-to-toe at the Lamborghini Countach the Ferrari Daytona and the Porsche 911 and often it came out on top it was so good Aston Martin built it all the way up through 1989 during the same time period the company also made the wedge-shaped of ganda luxury sedan it looks sick it was the first car to have led digital instruments and had other futuristic features like touch sensitive switches and pop-up freaking headlights on a giant sedan I love this thing when it was new the hand-built Lagonda was the world's fastest production four seater and one of the most expensive sedans in the world I own four of them in 1987 Ford took a stake in the in 1988 the Virage was the first new Aston Martin produced in 20 years the DB line was also set to return with the upcoming DB 7 and they needed a lot more money to make it happen so Ford bought the rest of Aston and added it to the Premier auto group along with other recent acquisitions Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo the db7 was Aston Martin's most successful model to date with more than 7,000 built by the time the db9 came out in 2001 the 5.9 liter v12 vanquish became Aston Martin's new flagship and their fastest production model ever in terms of top speed in the entire 90 year stretch between 1913 and 2003 Aston Martin built fewer than 15,000 cars but things really turned around in the 21st century and over 45,000 cars have been made since 2003 the v8 Vantage reappeared in 2005 and Aston partnered with pro-drive to create a motorsport division and make an official return to racing but it wasn't long before four decided to dismantle the P AG group and sell the brands off every time they think they got to figured out their dad is like okay I'm gonna leave forever hey smash that like button if you hate your dad but Ashton's were still selling well and now that they were selling well there was enough money to develop an uber expensive Aston Martin one-77 production was limited to 77 cars I have three of them with price tags around 1.5 million bones they were made with handcrafted aluminium body panels on carbon fiber chassis with power coming from a 7.3 litre v12 making 750 her Spurs with a top speed of 220 mouths how did you live up to speed uh-huh James this is Aston Martin hate to bother you but we're just calling make sure you're not forgetting this signet I'm not no I'm not closing episode with this signet it does make sense chronologically look this episode is almost done and I'm not ending with the Signet alright the Aston Martin Valkyrie is Astin's most advanced car in the company's history developed with the help from the Red Bull Formula One team and legendary race car designer Adrian Newey the Valkyrie is powered by an 1,100 horsepower v12 and sticks to the road with the help from the craziest aerodynamics ever devised it's so crazy that it's not even street-legal track only baby yeah yeah we have partnered with omae's again and this time we're giving away an aston martin you like all the aston martins we talked about did you like looking at this sweet sweet car well you could win one just like it not only are you entering to win a sweet Aston Martin Vantage with taxes and shipping covered but every donation also supports a great cause folds of Honor is an organization that provides educational scholarships to spouses and children of America's fallen and disabled servicemen so go to omae's comm slash Vantage and enter today you can win an Aston Martin just like this one thank you so much for watching hit the subscribe button you want to buy a shirt shop that doughnut the media follow me on Instagram anteus bumpy but a doughnut at donut media watch this episode of up speed watch this episode a wheelhouse I love you know any comments and tell me something sweet sponsor me sponsor me deodorant companies