Aston Martin: Made in Britain

Ben Collins writes a great book, retelling the fascinating history of Aston. Loved it.

Sympathetic book on Aston with some of Ben Collins own personal stories, fast paced and at times disjointed but pretty good read. Glad my Lady got me this as a gift.

Whose dumb idea was it to produce a book on one of the world’s greatest car marques in a small format with a few average photos tucked into a few pages in the middle ?

This undemanding and lightweight read suffers from something of an identity crisis. This manifests itself because the author comes across as a self-satisfied and smug individual, who is unclear who his target audience is.Because of this, the book makes a mistake by trying to be all things to all people, and displays a lack of confidence to opt for one consistent writing style. This makes for a disjointed, lumpy, badly written and edited text, which does not feel genuine.In part, the book is a serious, albeit very superficial, history of Aston Martin from inception to date. This bit is ok, but light on detail and quite selective by model and date. Elsewhere, the book tries way too hard to be a hip, cool, low brow read reverting into laddie slang.Overall, the book is a missed opportunity. It seems driven by Collins inflated ego needing to tell us lots of stories of what a great driver he is. But, like his own failed motorsport career, this makes for a book that is more of a miss, than a hit.

This is a riveting account of the history of Aston Martin. It probably helps if you are either an owner or a fan, but the pages are packed with interesting facts and amusing descriptions of the characters (drivers and management) that have influenced the chequered past of this amazing company. The build up to the famous Le Mans victory in 1959 reads like a best selling thriller and the characters involved simply come to life. Thoroughly recommended.Message for Ben......The captioned DB5 in the BT tower photo is actually a DB6!

Excellent until about page 230 ish when we go from the history of Aston to all the James Bond and top gear stuffLooking forward to the history of when Ford bought Aston and built the new head quarters and the design of the Gaydon generation but it’s largely just absent. Up to that point it was doing great and I learned so much but it let itself down badly.

Shame about the bloody sticker...didn't show any pictures of a sticker in the pic when I was buying it...

Switches from serious biography to lads mag top gear speak. When in the former mode it is an interesting read, the latter not so. Overall a fair read but relatively light going.