Aston Martin |
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Aston Martin page on 5 January 2016, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Aston Martin Lagonda Limited is a British manufacturer of luxury sports cars and grand tourers. It was founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford.
The firm became associated with luxury grand touring cars in the 1950s and 1960s, and with the fictional character James Bond following his use of a DB5 model in the 1964 film Goldfinger.
The company has had a chequered financial history, including bankruptcy in the 1970s, but has also enjoyed long periods of success and stability, including under the ownership of David Brown, from 1947 to 1972 and of the Ford Motor Company from 1994 to 2007.
In March 2007, a consortium of investors, led by David Richards, purchased 92% of Aston Martin for £479 million, with Ford retaining a £40 million stake. David Richards became chairman of Aston Martin. In December 2012, the Italian private equity fund Investindustrial signed a deal to buy 37.5% of Aston Martin, investing £150 million as a capital increase.
Founding
Aston Martin was founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford. The two had joined forces as Bamford & Martin the previous year to sell cars made by Singer from premises in Callow Street, London where they also serviced GWK and Calthorpe vehicles. Martin raced specials at Aston Hill near Aston Clinton, and the pair decided to make their own vehicles. The first car to be named Aston Martin was created by Martin by fitting a four-cylinder Coventry-Simplex engine to the chassis of a 1908 Isotta-Fraschini.
They acquired premises at Henniker Mews in Kensington and produced their first car in March 1915. Production could not start because of the outbreak of World War I, and Martin joined the Admiralty and Bamford the Royal Army Service Corps. All machinery was sold to the Sopwith Aviation Company.
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This Astin Martin is ready for sale, if you can meet its price 2013 Washington Auto Show Voice of America Photo by Phil Alexiou Auto Show Dazzles With Technology View photo of Aston Martin - 106KB |
| Date | Document Name & Details | Documents |
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| 15 January 2014 | Aston Martin Recall 13V228 To: Jennifer Timian, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration From: Bill Donnelly, Aston Martin Lagonda of North America | PDF - 312KB - 4 pages |
| 30 January 2014 | Accelerator Pedal Arm May Break To: Bill Donnelly, Aston Martin Lagonda of North America From: Jennifer Timian, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration | PDF - 50KB - 2 pages |
| 31 January 2014 | Aston Martin Recall 14V-010 To: Jennifer Timian, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration From: Bill Donnelly, Aston Martin Lagonda of North America | PDF - 40KB - 1 pages |
