If there is one image that sums up Aston Martin, it is James Bond glowering beside his DB5. Bond’s car was the pinnacle of technology with its machine guns and ejector seat for dubious passengers. Yet the DB5 was a car that emerged from the ultimate cottage industry that was as high-tech as a cream tea and made cars as temperamental as the English weather.

Aston’s reputation stemmed from that DB range, spawned by David Brown, a member of an engineering dynasty, whose entrepreneurial skill was allied to an instinctive feel for what the English sports car should look, feel and sound like.

David Richards, the new owner, has the same feel for Aston but has bought a company unrecognisable from Brown’s days. The values remain the same but a factory at Gaydon, Oxfordshire, is a world away from the firm’s long-time base in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, where workers could once be seen pushing engines on trolleys across the main road between the two halves of the site.

Ford has transformed the business into a serious player, producing a range of models that challenges Porsche and Ferrari. The mystery is why Ford wants to sell the business just when it is doing something it failed to do with aplomb for almost all its 92-year history: make a profit.

Aston Martin has gone bust more times than Old Blue Eyes came back but Richards has captured a company on the upswing with a fine lineup of sexy, fast cars with all the essential ingredients of an English sports car.

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