Come the early ’90s, Aston Martin was beleaguered. That wasn’t anything particularly new – the marque has spent most of its existence living perilously. But, newly acquired by Ford, it had to pay back the massive investment made in it and prove itself a success on a scale like never before. The key to that lay in a new car that moved away from ageing technology and an engine born in the ’60s, towards something more accessible and modern yet still irrefutably an Aston.
The result was the DB7, which did all this and more; revitalising the marque, establishing a design language that echoes through to today, and selling in greater numbers than any predecessors. It also made a star out of the man who created it, Ian Callum. While he was quite prominent as a designer prior to the DB7, it was within industry circles after a career spent at Ford. The lithe and elegant new Aston Martin put him alongside the Giorgetto Giugiaros, Giovanni Michelottis and Frank Stephensons of this world. Subsequent work, including the Vanquish and his range of Jaguars, has only cemented that position.
Yet prior to the DB7, Ian Callum hadn’t even designed an entire vehicle from scratch, having been more focused on items like steering wheels at Ford. It was a similar story to that of his Aston Martin predecessor William Towns, who designed seats at Newport Pagnell before coming up
