My first close encounter with the marque was while visiting Doug Bianchi at High Wycombe airfield. I had come to purchase a restored Stompe biplane (for £300). Doug also had an Aston Martin International in fine condition and tried to sell it to me for £1500!. This kind of put the offer into sharp focus! I could own five biplanes for this car!

I did drive it around the airfield and loved every minute of it. This was a real thoroughbred sports car with hardly any vices at all but I am sorry to say that I flew out of there with the Stompe!

Later I was able to buy a series of second hand cars and drove my drophead DB2/4 vantage in the USA from coast to coast and back with absolutely no trouble at all. This was in my mind the perfect car, light, responsive and tough as hell. In addition, the entire hood lifted up to give unparalleled access to the fine handbuilt (and signed) engine. I sold it in the US for rather a lot of money (the James Bond film had just come out) and later bought a DB6. How things had changed! This was unexciting, heavy and with electric window wiper motors that were always on the blink. Indeed, this was so common that the factory was always out of spares. The standby hand winder did the job in about 30 turns to my intense frustration.

While visiting the factory, they tried to sell me a demonstrator V8 DBS. It was nice, but if I had to buy a wedge shaped car, there were others I thought were better. I elected to buy a BOSS 429 Mustang and actually never regretted it!