Aston Martin’s ownership structure and commercial fortunes have had more twists than a Federico Fellini movie in the 110 years since Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford commenced business. Perhaps the only similarities between Aston Martin’s first and latest grand prix cars – the 55bhp 1.5-litre 1922 TT and 750bhp 1.6-litre turbo 2023 AMR23 – is the stupendous wealth of their backers, first Count Louis Zborowski and currently Lawrence Stroll.
As the David Brown Ltd-owned business focused on racing the DB2 and DB3 in the early-1950s, “the team suffered from a frenetic neurosis that they should really be competing in single-seater racing,” wrote AM historian Anthony Pritchard.
The Feltham technicians therefore created an F2 car by marrying a modified DB3 chassis with a 2-litre variant of the 2.6litre LB6 engine. Assembled over the 1951-52 winter, it was rejected by technical director Professor Dr Robert Eberan von Eberhorst, and dismantled and forgotten. John Heath showed interest in the engine for his F2 HWMs but David Brown knocked that notion on the head, too.
In the autumn of 1953 Aston Martin contemplated F1 again, and this time proceeded with a low-priority project, busy as it was with DB3S sports car racing programmes, which made sense for the business from both product development and marketing perspectives.
Project designation DP155 was allocated with chassis number
