Victor Gauntlett, the Chairman of AML during much of the 1980s, was intensely keen to build a ‘DB4 for the 1990s’. It was intended that the car would not be quite so handbuilt as the Virage, but still be produced in low volumes in a new factory, at the rate of about a thousand a year. It was only after the Ford Motor Company acquired a 75% stake in AML, in September 1987, that such a project could start to achieve reality.
In October 1991 and with Walter Hayes as the new head of AML, the car that was eventually to become the DB7 began development. Initially the car was known internally as Project NPX (Newport Pagnell eXperimental) but gained the DB7 moniker following the agreement of Sir David Brown. The TWR Group (Tom Walkinshaw Racing) was given the responsibility for design, engineering, development, certification and homologation of the DB7.
Displayed to the public for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1993, the DB7 was the star of the show! The Ian Callum design was virtually unchanged when production of the six-cylinder coupe began at the new Bloxham factory in late 1994.
By the time production of the DB7 was brought to a close in 2003, 7,117 had been built; the companies most successful car ever, accounting for a third of all Aston Martins built at that time.
