We meet the man who makes your Aston dreams come true, whether it's remaking an iconic 1960s DB, shoehorning a 7.0-litre V12 into the Vantage or rolling out a new generation of hypercars
Aston Martin’s David King is a mere shell of a man when we meet him in the Le Mans 24 Hour paddock.
Pale and clearly exhausted, it’s fair to say that at this precise moment he’s not enjoying life – and it’s got nothing to do with a chronic lack of sleep.
With the race just 14 hours young, King has had front-row seats to an agonising display of penalties and sheer bad luck that has sent the leading Aston Martin GTE Pro race car from pole to last place with two massive shunts along the way.
King is clearly suffering, and so is everyone else in the Aston hospitality trailer, but we’re not complaining because the brand’s dire on-track failure is our gain now that the British car-maker’s real-life Q is only too happy to sit down and chat to carsales.
As long as we don’t mention the race.
Carefully positioning himself with his back to the race’s live feed, King even flashes a smile when we begin talking about his day job – and it’s no wonder, since Aston Martin Lagonda’s vice-president and special vehicles operations chief is the guy who’s quickly earning the reputation of the man with the Midas touch.
With an order bank full and millions of dollars of deposits gathered, his small division is flourishing while its rivals can do nothing but sit back in awe.
Lessons from the past
But it wasn’t always like this and you don’t have to turn the clock back too far to when Aston specials were a hard sell within the company.
“The 2013 CC100 is a good example of how we used to do things before Andy Palmer arrived. We did sporadic specials when we thought it was a good idea, or if we thought there was an opportunity or, in the C100’s case, there was a centenary.
“We’d take a bit of budget, bring people together, make a car and deliver it. But it was quite inefficient,” said King, craning his neck back to eye up the screen.
“Sometimes it didn’t really work and I think I can say this now — there’s been enough time…,” says the Q boss as he leans forward and lowers his voice.
“We took the same approach with the One-77, we did a great car but then launched it in global recession and really struggled to sell them, if I’m honest. We had to sweat those last 20 sales.”
Enter Palmer and Vulcan
The fortunes of Aston Martin’s Q division changed shortly after CEO Palmer took over the helm.
“Just around the time Andy arrived we got the idea of doing the Vulcan,” said King.
“We had actually just finished the Taraf — the Lagonda which was a commission from an external customer, and Andy said to me one day: ‘Hang on, you guys are good at this, you should be doing this for other customers regularly and this should be part of our business plan’.”
From then on, King was allowed to put a more permanent team in place for special projects.
Palmer urged the new special ops to do three things: continue to come up with more ideas but work closer with product planners and, key to its success, work closer with the car-maker’s existing customers to gather feedback.
This approach radically changed how Q operated and gone was the “if we build it they will come” approach.
Now, instead of second-guessing the wants and desires of Aston buyers, King knows that before he’s spends a single cent whether or not there’s a market for a special.
“It meant we could finally start doing cars like the GT12 and the GT8 – madder, badder versions of mainstream cars that I’ve always wanted to do, because we knew there was demand.”
With his team in place there was also less need to bother other departments that were busy creating the core models.
King says his small below-the-radar skunkworks operation soon began to thrive, winning a fine reputation within the car-maker for doing things not only quickly but efficiently and, crucially for small low-volume Astons, cost-effectively.
Throttling supplies
Key to Q’s success is building cars like the GT8 in limited numbers, believes King.
“If you build them in limited numbers customers recognise the long-term value of them as investments as well as really good cars.
“People now look back and see the value of those One-77s and the Zagatos we did in the ‘90s and 2000s. We’re not greedy, we don’t do silly numbers.
“When we say we do 100, we do 100. It’s building that reputation of meaning what we say while delivering great cars.
“Now when we announce specials they sell off plan,” adds King proudly.
With Q’s newfound success, King says it’s now easier than ever for him to go ahead and spin-off faster, wilder, more extreme models or take a trip down memory lane with one of the car-maker’s Continuation models.
“The beauty of it is it’s now self-funding because customers are prepared to put down deposits and, typically, we have a full order bank before we start building cars.”
That said, not every model has to be cash neutral from the off, but gone are the days King presents a car that could “hurt the business”.
The money men
Perhaps the most exciting part of his job nowadays is dealing with those billionaire customers like a wealthy blogger friend of Aston Martin who’s at Le Mans to support the car-maker’s race efforts.
Not content with buying a regular Vantage, he wanted his road car converted to full GT3 spec. Then, once that was done, he wanted the regular car’s Mercedes-AMG twin-turbo V8 dumped for the One-77’s normally aspirated 7.0-litre V12. It sounds like fantasy, but King loves the idea.
“In theory if you want to put a One-77 engine in a Vantage we would assess it as a potential one-off and see whether if it was feasible and quote them a price.
“There are boundaries of taste to always consider with our special projects but a One-77 engine in a Vantage would be a really cool thing to do,” says King, clearly excited by the prospect but also cautious with one-offs.
“The challenge with one-offs is you have all your design, engineering and tooling spread over one unit and they tend to soak up a lot of resources.
“There remains a strong desire to do one-offs with Aston Martin – but we’ve got to do them properly and it’s still possible to make significant changes to vehicles and homologate them if you’re smart,” adds King.
Currently Aston Martin averages two one-off commissions a year — but few owners are keen to publicise their bespoke creation.
“Our customers remain a diverse group, from quite reclusive guys who just want to take the car and disappear to those who want to show off and use their car heavily, to a faithful core of customers who remain very loyal to the brand.”
One such enthusiastic US customer recently took delivery of a DB4 GT Continuation – a car not currently road-legal in most counties as it’s not homologated to current safety standards.
Tell that to the owner who popped down to his local DMV in Florida as, within a few hours, the computer said ‘yes’ and his million-dollar recreation was road-legal with plates and ready for a 1000-mile road trip.
King clearly relishes hearing stories and was equally happy when a small band of track-only Vulcan owners banded together to make their cars road-legal.
While the race drones on behind us, I ask Aston Martin’s Q boss what would happen if an owner asked him to rebody their Valkyrie.
“No, the Valkyrie is sacred in what it looks like. We won’t change it,” says King, hinting at the huge amount of blood, sweat and tears that has gone into making one of the most extreme cars in history.
See you in Valhalla
Next up for King and his team is to ensure there’s an AMR version of every car in Aston’s range — including the DBX SUV — but the biggest challenge is developing the ‘Son of Valkyrie’, the Valhalla hypercar.
Whereas before the majority of the engineering rested on Red Bull’s shoulders, for the next hypercar that swings back to Aston Martin Q – with Adrian Newey and his Formula 1 team providing more of a consultancy service.
“We’re not just going to dive in with a mid-engine car and say ‘hey, here’s a Ferrari beater’, we’ve partnered up with our F1 race team, will establish some mid-engine racing credibility, release the Valkyrie hypercar and take all that learning into Valhalla,” said King.
“When you connect Aston Martin, Red Bull and Adrian Newey with amazing design and a car with extraordinary targets, then it opens the eyes of people who didn’t consider Aston Martin products before – it’s breaking out of our conservative smart British suit a little.”
With that, it was time for King to face reality and return to the pits to check on progress, but as he left we’re sure there was more of a spring in his step as he relished the reminder of what is to come from Aston Martin.
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Keyword: BEST OF BRITISH: Aston Martin's yes man