ANDREW FRANKEL

THERE HAVEN’T BEEN MANY people in this industry to whom I warmed more immediately than Victor Gauntlett, whom I last saw in 2001, 10 years after he left Aston Martin’s chair and about 18 months before his death aged just 60.

Victor was many things, well-to-do, ebullient and funny among them, but so too was he modest, kind and had a brain sharper even than the cut of his tailor-made suits. His contribution to Aston Martin between taking the helm on January 5, 1981 having first dropped his wife at Guildford Hospital to give birth to their son Mark, and