Myth Buster
Aston Martin DBS/ V8
Debunking the most common old wives’ tales ASTON MARTIN DBS/AM V8 1 THE PERSUADERS! ASTON WAS A V8
Roger Moore’s oh-so-English Lord Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders! boasted a Bahama Yellow DBS V8. Except he didn’t. Aston Martin was keen to have its new DBS V8 feature. But all its V8 cars had been sold. So a six-cylinder DBS was modified with DBS V8 badges and GKN alloy wheels. Its registration number was ‘BS1’ in the series, but was really registered ‘PPP 6H’ – circus impresario Billy Smart Jr owned ‘BS1’. One continuity error saw ‘PPH 6H’ slip through on-screen.
2 ‘OSCAR INDIA’ MEANS ‘OCTOBER INTRODUCTION’
The Series 4 V8 was intended to be launched on 1 October 1978, so its designation of ‘Oscar India’ reputedly stands for ‘October Introduction’ or ‘October I’. But a competing theory comes from development engineer, Mike Loasby. Aston’s managing director Alan Curtis had a Cessna registered ‘G-BFOI’ (‘Golf, Bravo, Foxtrot, Oscar, India’). ‘Oscar India was so called so that we could refer to it among ourselves at Aston Martin without anybody knowing what it was called… people would think we were referring to the aircraft.’
3 THE FORD MUSTANG INFLUENCED THE ASTON’S DESIGN
You’d never get Aston Martin to admit it, but the DBS owes a lot to Ford’s Mustang. Yet is it as much as people think? Designer William Towns admitted the rear quarters were ‘borrowed’ from the earlier Ford fastbacks, and the peaked front wings were also a Mustang feature. However, Aston’s 1953 DB3S also had this distinctive styling cue, so it could have been a tip of the (peaked) cap to an illustrious ancestor. Arguably the V8’s 1972 facelift nose-job made it even more Mustang-ish.