We’re on a Shropshire hillside, late summer, awaiting three significant cars. Our muster-point is populated by dog walkers, ramblers and the odd commercial traveller enjoying the views over a coffee cup. Suddenly, heads swivel as the lightly muffled roar of a big V8 announces the arrival of an early-70s Aston Martin DBS; seconds later, one or two of the ramblers pause mid-step and stare as the impossibly long, chiselled form of a Lagonda saloon follows it in. And now everyone’s attention is laser-locked as the Earth-skimming spaceship that is the Aston Martin Bulldog appears amid a crackling cacophony of sound. The youngest of these cars is more than 40 years old, yet their power to shock and entrance is undiminished. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of William Towns.
Bill Towns, as he was often known, is probably best remembered for the Lagonda ‘wedge’, the outlandish four-door saloon that wowed the crowds at the 1976 British Motor Show. His name has also been back in the media with the re-emergence of the spectacular Bulldog supercar, another of his designs, fresh from a painstaking restoration. But there was so much more to Towns. Away from the automotive arena, his work embraced everything from lawnmowers via furniture to water sculptures. Within it, as well as Aston Martin Lagonda, he worked for Rover, the Rootes Group, Reliant and Jensen among others, and became a maker of kit cars with the innovative Hustler.
The car that brought him to prominence, though, was the Aston DBS, and the story of its conception says a lot about the man. It was 1966 and Aston had a long-standing partnership with the Italian design house, Touring of Milan, while the recently arrived Towns, barely 30, was a lowly seat designer at Newport Pagnell. But such was his self-belief that, when the bosses rejected Touring’s proposal for the new model, Towns presented his own sketches in the form of a hand-bound brochure. David Brown and his senior managers
