August von Joest’s passion for Aston Martin stretches back to his youth, growing up on a farm between Bonn and Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany during the 1950s and being captivated by the James Bond novels. What stood out in Ian Fleming’s 1959 Goldfinger book was the introduction of a new 007 car by Aston Martin, which would subsequently become recognised globally as Bond’s iconic ride.
Von Joest points out that Fleming placed Bond in a secret service-issued Aston Martin DB Mark III. However, the car in the book, wrongly described as a DB3, is different to the one that appears in the 1964 film, which was a silver-birch DB5 and the company’s latest model when the film was in pre-production.
“My first real memories are as a young boy and the way Fleming described the car, the exciting prose of its sleek design really enthralled me,” he says, eyes gleaming with youthful delight. Visiting English relatives sparked a greater zeal for the marque as he saw the cars driven on roads and raced by Stirling Moss, Roy Salvadori, Carol Shelby and others.
“I absolutely fell in love with Aston Martin,” he adds, his fascination emanating from the craftsmanship and the leading technology of its time. “Their cars are very aesthetically pleasing, combining both technical vision and creative style, and there was something about the marque, the outline, colours and design; that scent of something special you cannot explain.”
Aston Martin introduced features that were not standard for cars in the 1950s that made their vehicles superior. High-performance engines built by renowned W. O. Bentley and Tadeusz Marek had very efficient chain-driven dual overhead camshafts and the famous David Brown gearbox. Certainly James Bond added to the car’s allure, but he believes that the company’s heritage and history, the story of the brand and how it all started is equally enticing.
The cars have retained the basic outline of the early 1950 models, he notes. For instance, the shape of the radiator grill on the DB2 has hardly changed, only becoming slightly flatter and smoother on modern cars. He describes the proportions as perfect; a long flat slender front and curvy fastback with good weight and equilibrium between the front and rear of the car.
“There are characteristics that maintain the outer appearance, something in the line that always repeats and continuity of the brand,” says von Joest. “You can distinguish an Aston in the dark by its silhouette as you could in the old days with cars like the Jaguar E-Type, which today is more mishmash.”
Motor fanatic
Von Joest has always been attracted by motor sports; in his early teens he used to bicycle to the Nürburgring, about 55 kilometres (km) from where he lived, to see the races and grew up together with famous racing drivers Jochen Mass, Hans-Joachim Stuck and Klaus Ludwig. In the mid-1960s, he took part in motorcycle trials and then racing classic British bikes in the early 1980s until 1994.
He started his career with an apprenticeship with BMW and work took him all over the world to Africa, Far East and the Middle East. “When I returned to Germany, I had a Porsche and later a Ferrari but nothing really pleased me until I had the Aston,” he says.
He bought his first Aston Martin, a DB Mark III, in 2002 after a chance meeting on a flight back to Berlin. Von Joest was perusing the pages of a car magazine and a fellow passenger, the car’s former owner, sparked up conversation revealing he had a DB MkIII but was not for sale as it was for his future wife. Being fairly insistent, von Joest called him up every six months until two years later he acquired the car when the owner separated from his wife.
He has since re-modelled the car, painstakingly taking it apart and slowly and surely building a fantastic sports version for classic rallies and regularity runs. Works began in Berlin and were completed by Trinity Engineering at Cobham in England, where Tim Butcher, an outstanding Aston Martin engineer, now services the car every winter.
“Owning a classic car is not a cheap exercise; you easily spend another 25%-30% of the purchase price getting the car refitted the way you want it for yourself,” he says.
Each year he and his wife Heike, who he describes as an accomplished navigator, aim to enter at least two or three of the prominent classic car rallies, which are usually three- to four-day events covering between 1,000-2,000km. Recent events in the last years, include Italy’s Gran Premio Nuvolari in September, a classic car rally in Morocco from Marrakesh to the Atlas Mountains and back, another covering the Black Forest and Alsace-Lorraine, the Hamburg-Berlin Rally, as well as being invited to the members’ meetings at Goodwood and classic car runs in Switzerland and Berlin/Potsdam.
“The rallies are great fun; the outstanding scenery, very nice people from all over Europe and great cars,” says von Joest. “When you drive through Mecklenburg near the Baltic Sea, beautiful villages in Tuscany and Umbria or Swiss mountain passes in those old cars on lovely small roads, it is so relaxing. Having a good result or special stage win is a bonus but the main thing is simply taking part and relaxing with friends and good company after it’s all over.”
Though von Joest jokes they are “a family of petrol heads,” motoring seems to course through their veins. He has rallied and gone on a road trip in Cuba with his 21-year old son Alex, driven his seven-year old son Philip through Potsdam for a classic car meeting, while both Philip and Annie his four-year old daughter request their mother, another car enthusiast, to run them to school in her classic 1977 Porsche 911S. His father bought his first Porsche after his fifth child was born, while one brother has a classic 1966 Ford Mustang Fastback and another has “the classic gangster car” Citroën Traction.
However, his love of Aston Martins was not sated with his first purchase and a second, a Vanquish S, followed in 2008, after seeing some at the Aston Martin Works Service
factory at Newport Pagnell and finding one at Nicolas Mee in London, being hooked immediately. It turned out to be the private car of David Richards, the former chairman of Aston Martin, and, after discussions with Heike, he bought it to celebrate Philip’s birth six weeks earlier.
He describes the Vanquish S glowingly, judging it Aston Martin’s first modern car after the DB6, a conglomeration of all modern technology and notes that pretty much everything introduced in later models, like the DB7 or DB9, started with the Vanquish.
“The Vanquish S is a lovely car and still one of the last grand tourers; room for two people, bucket seats and decent trunk at the back to store luggage. We travel in style and comfort and the big engine powers us through the German motorways.”
Strong heritage
Von Joest was honoured to become the only non-British trustee of the Aston Martin Heritage Trust (AMHT) in 2013 and is enjoying the role immensely. The Trust is the official archive of Aston Martin Lagonda and all 6,500 members of the Aston Martin Owners’ Club are also members of the Trust.
He and 11 other trustees meet every two to three months to review progress on the work of the Trust in the promotion of the history and heritage of the marque. Von Joest’s role is multi-faceted, from maintaining contact with the Aston Martin Owners Club board in Germany and the large domestic motor dealers, to speaking about the history of the car and ensuring the brand is highly visible.
The Trust houses a wealth of documentation, from the build sheets and complete car history of every Aston Martin built to old picture material and press clippings. The Trust also organises events, like the Walter Hayes Memorial Lecture every January at the Royal Automobile Club in London, where members are treated to a sumptuous dinner followed by talks by eminent speakers. Past speakers include world famous racing drivers Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks, panel sessions with members of the current Aston Martin Racing team and last year, the new CEO of Aston Martin, Andy Palmer.
The AMHT also helped organise the Aston Martin Centenary Display in July 2013 on the lawns in front of Kensington Palace, featuring one hundred of the brand’s most iconic cars in a timeline display, including A3, the oldest surviving Aston Martin. “The Trust is for those who have and yearn for knowledge but equally importantly love the brand,” he proclaims.
At present, von Joest is on the lookout for a pre-War car, which could be another Aston Martin and he is obtaining advice from Andrew Bell at Ecurie Bertelli, the world specialist for pre-War Aston Martins, but also visiting classic car centres to inspect other marques.
“My wife and I decided that this is another class we should rally, they are lovely cars and will complement our range of vehicles to the early period. We are looking at what is reasonable as an investment and hopefully by the spring of next year we will have a pre-War car to participate in classic rallies,” he predicts.
