Aston Martin: Made In Britain Ben Collins Quercus £20

If an owner likes to think he resembles his car, there is no doubt with which motor Ben Collins would want to be associated. Ever since his dad took him to the showroom and bought one on a whim, Collins – who played The Stig in the Jeremy-Clarksonpunch-a-producerwhile-wearing-dad-jeans era of Top Gear – has been hopelessly in love with Aston Martins.

The style, the swish, the fact that an entire herd of Highland cattle is required to source the leather for the driving seat: these are the vehicles that make his heart swell. And here he tells the car’s story with a genuine affection. Sure, there are occasional lapses into ‘space frame perimeter chassis’ and ‘helicoidally threaded gears’ territory, but this is largely a glorious tale of British seat-of-the-pants invention. And of people too.

What becomes clear is that The Stig most admires the drivers who hurtled

Lionel Martin’s early designs around Silverstone and Le Mans, a team of rogues and reprobates, fuelled by warbred sang froid, the sort capable of saying, when found in the wreckage of a smash by emergency crew: ‘Got a smoke, old boy?’ Never mind that the firm has gone bust more often than Donald Trump’s businesses, for Collins, Aston is an outfit of enduring class. Among its early admirers was Ian Fleming. Collins reckons, like him, the writer was smitten as a boy, watching one tear around the circuit at Brooklands. There was never any other machine he was going to allow James Bond to drive. And when Sean Connery leaned against the bonnet of a DB5 in Goldfinger, Aston became the chicest motor in history. As he cannot help but tell us at length, Collins has been a stunt driver on every Bond movie since Quantum Of Solace. It’s him swinging a recincarnated DB5 around in the forthcoming No Time To Die. Though we will have to wait to see him in action as the film has been postponed several times. Collins must be despairing at its tardy release: it marks the first time an Aston has ever been late to the party.