David brown Speedback GT Mercedes-Benz
C-class estate VW Scirocco r BMW 2-series active Tourer Aston Martin Vanquish
You only live twice
The Speedback GT rekindles the spirit of
James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 with a very modern twist. I am reminded, sitting
in the leathery snug of the David Brown Speedback GT, of a story from my
childhood. In the late 18th century, William Beckford was ‘the richest commoner
in Britain’ and built in Wiltshire Fonthill Abbey, a vast, grandiose
Gothic-revival cathedral and home which fell down around his ears, nearly
ruining him.
The
Speedback GT rekindles the spirit of James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 with a very
modern twist.
But with the road to St Tropez stretching
out in front of me (admittedly from the rather unglamorous starting point of
the A4421 near Bicester, Oxfordshire), it seems unlikely that David Brown will
end up in penury at the end of his own project. He has much of the vision,
daring, drive and possibly foolhardiness that makes men of means attempt
follies more conservative-thinking people could never conceive of trying.
And yet, just 16 months after he started
working on this long-held dream, I am sitting in a Speedback GT thinking it’s a
proper car, by god, albeit a staggeringly expensive one, at half-a-million quid
plus whatever the local taxman adds on, with more than £2.5million already
spent from private funding during development.
And
yet, just 16 months after he started working on this long-held dream, I am
sitting in a Speedback GT thinking it’s a proper car, by god, albeit a
staggeringly expensive one, at half-a-million quid plus whatever the local
taxman adds on, with more than $4million already spent from private funding
during development.
Brown, clearly not short of a few bob
having run the family’s heavy-plant engineering firm and sold out to
Caterpillar, is an inveterate tinkerer, a car lover and a perfectionist with a
fierce pride in British engineering.
What he wanted to create was a grand tourer
that channelled the brio of an age where a chap might speed to the Côte d’Azur
for a liaison with a stylish ingénue, without the ignominy of sitting in a pool
of oil on the auto route. The latest engineering allied to the romance of a
bygone age.
So there’s a tension between nostalgia and
modernity in the car that is hard to balance. Too much of the former and you
end up with a replica, too much of the latter and the spirit is lost. So has he
achieved it? Well, in part, yes. Certainly, as we drive around Oxfordshire,
it’s a car that makes people smile and come over to chat, because they
instinctively understand the shape of it and the mood it is trying to evoke.
The view from behind the steering wheel is
one you’ve always known in your mind: the soft curves of the outer wings and
wide sweeps of the bonnet are straight out of the Aston Martin back catalogue.
All it needs now is to be pointing at a slightly scratchy film reel of an
Alpine mountain pass being driven and you could be in almost any TV or film of
the 1960s.
The
view from behind the steering wheel is one you’ve always known in your mind:
the soft curves of the outer wings and wide sweeps of the bonnet are straight
out of the Aston Martin back catalogue.
