Star Trek: Enterprise

It is a marque known for sophistication...

sportiness...

...and spies.

Today, this famed English automaker

is one of the last independent motor companies.

That pressure drives me.

There isn't enough time. There's not quite enough resource.

You starve a little bit.

To survive, Aston Martin plans to expand

and to fund it, they need a new top of the line machine.

So they go back to the drawing board and pen a more potent exterior...

engineer it to push the boundaries of aerodynamics...

and handcraft each and every bespoke example.

This has to win.

The marque's quest to win might very well hinge

on a single machine...

the DBS Superleggera.

It goes zero to 60 in just three point two seconds...

hits a top speed of 211 miles per hour,

and costs a royal £225,000.

The DBS Superleggera.

Aston Martin's top of the line production halo machine

and perhaps the most important vehicle ever made by the marque.

It's a symbol of Britain.

It resonates as much as red buses and black cabs.

Aston Martin doesn't do vanity projects.

The 100-year-old British marque has repeatedly fought the odds to survive.

That kind of great British underdog story.

It's right up there with Dunkirk.

Up against it,

facing the inevitable kind of doom, if you like.

Historically, the marque has never produced very many vehicles

nor employed very many people.

Yet it's always done an extraordinary amount

with the resources on hand.

When we're outnumbered, that's when we get really good.

And maybe that's part of it.

Let's kind of make it happen and everybody kind of pushes themselves.

The battle for survival has honed a unique skill

crafting grand touring, or GT, machines.

Vehicles that combine high performance attributes

with long distance driving comfort.

A recipe that often attracts a very discerning celebrity clientèle.

We've got an incredibly rich history,

Mick Jaggers, the Royal Family.

People just know about Aston Martin.

However, the most noteworthy Aston fanboy

might well be the world's most famous spy.

Bond. James Bond.

The relationship starts in the movie Goldfinger in 1964,

which features a kitted-out DB5

and still continues today.

That image of Sean Connery leaning against the DB5 is something

that sticks in people's minds.

The DB5 helps make Aston a household name,

and it's followed by other legendary grand tourers like the DB6...

V8 Vantage...

and DB7.

We owned the luxury GT space.

Owning the GT space in the past

doesn't guarantee holding it in the future.

Today, the grant touring segment is highly competitive

as famously high performance marques

like Ferrari and McLaren

jockey for Aston's core market

while at the same time...

notable high-end luxury car makers Bentley and Rolls Royce

have gotten both faster and edgier.

Every car we do has to succeed.

To keep competitors at bay, in October 2014,

the company hires 23-year auto industry veteran Andy Palmer

to help restore the glory and lay a foundation for the future.

A lot of people thought I was mad.

I knew Aston had its problems,

but I believed that I'd equipped myself

to do that chief executive's job

and do it in a company that had its problems to solve.

The good news is that the chief executive role

is Palmer's dream job.

The bad news is that the marque has consistently teetered

on the brink of insolvency.

It's certainly hard to even count

the amount of near misses we've had and financial crisis.

Over the past ten decades,

the brand goes bankrupt seven different times.

Consistently changing hands amongst a diverse set of owners...

that range from petrochemical engineer Victor Gauntlett

to shipping magnate Sir Arthur Sutherland

and even tractor kingpin David Brown.

The most recent handover comes in early 2007

when the Ford motor company sells the marque to simply save itself.

Clearly I didn't think I was mad.

I relished the entrepreneurial opportunity that existed.

Aston's turmoil is nothing new for the marque or the industry.

At the turn of the 20th century,

there are thousands of car companies battling it out.

If you look at the automotive industry,

it's about 130 years old, thereabouts.

And it starts off with thousands of names,

and then it goes down to hundreds, and then it goes down to less than 100.

Today, many automakers have lessened their risks

by teaming up with other brands as part of global conglomerates.

Longstanding GT foe Bentley is part of the Volkswagen group.

While Rolls Royce, another historical rival,

is owned by BMW.

Even British icons Jaguar and Land Rover are part of an Indian-owned multinational.

Aston on the other hand is one of the last true independents.

The last of a dying breed.

Being independent is one of those pressures in the system.

We don't have big brother or big sister to support us.

Moving forward requires a bold new plan of action

to escape the errors of the past

when wealthy individuals repeatedly bought the company for vanity

but rarely, if ever, invested in its future.

We continuously saw this same mistake

repeating and repeating and repeating, which was extremely rich people

buying the company, investing in the new car,

and then failing to create the follow-up.

You know, the second album is always the most difficult.

But if you don't have it, you become a one hit wonder, right?

To avoid yet another momentary success

followed by dire failure,

Palmer proposes a radical solution,

what he dubs The Second Century Plan.

Introducing one new car to market every year for seven years straight

before repeating the entire process all over again.

It's a very, very simple approach.

It says there are seven different cars,

one car every year,

each car having a seven-year life.

Copy, repeat. Copy, repeat. Copy, repeat.

It ain't rocket science, as they say.

The linchpin of this strategy is the DBS Superleggera,

the marque's halo car and top of the line production vehicle.

It's the third of seven machines...

and the key to generating the required cash

for the brand's possible expansion.

The DBS is incredibly important

because it's the car that's generating the cash

that essentially goes into the portfolio expansion

that now allows us to redefine the company.

If the DBS Superleggera succeeds,

the marque will have the resources to expand into a range of machines

including SUVs and perhaps secure its future.

However, failure may very well scuttle the entire enterprise.

I don't know whether you've ever read The Art of War,

but I spent a lot of time in the Far East,

and the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

The best form of defense is to attack.

To go on the offensive and bring the fight directly

to the doorstep of other automakers,

Palmer turns to chief creative officer Marek Reichman

and tasks him with blending the look of an Aston Martin

with the contemporary engineering needs of a modern supercar.

The brief was, we have an engineering structure

that will give us a car which will be a competitor

and how do you close that, and what are the principles behind the car.

And then you start to formulate ideas.

The first hurdle is to find a sexy and sleek shape for the DBS.

The process begins by putting pen to paper.

Within design, we control what I would call

the emotional package of the car.

Your first interaction.

So we work to define therefore the beauty.

The difficulty defining beauty for a modern supercar

lies in a contradiction.

Marek and his team must create a lust-worthy exterior,

yet it must also funnel the air around and through the machine,

which often requires unsightly scoops, vents, and wings.

Power of the pen for a designer is the ability to put down your idea

because I can talk to you.

I can try and describe something

but if I sketch it , it takes me a few seconds to show you what I mean.

If you can convince someone that this is the right object to do,

you know, okay, I'm going to invest X millions in what?

In me speaking? In what? In this.

And as soon as you show what you mean, then people say, oh yeah,

I'm going to invest in that because clearly that looks beautiful.

Sketching moves from the old world to the new

as the team jumps from two dimensions into 3D space

and modelers expertly shape clay to bring the new machine to life.

However, you can't just draw and sculpt a pleasing shape.

To succeed, the machine must perform as well as it looks.

Developing a halo car like DBS

is the hardest thing that you can ever do in the auto industry.

It has to be the pinnacle of contemporary engineering,

and that means that you devote your life to it.

Devotion that requires the marque's engineering team

to push the boundaries of aerodynamics

on their new top of the line production halo car.

Something that requires a bit of magic

and the successful application of an 18th century theorem.

For over a century, Aston Martin has fought to survive.

Their latest resurrection and their Second Century plan

hinges on the marque's newest top of the line production machine...

the DBS Superleggera.

The DBS Superleggera is very much a linchpin

within that seven year plan 'cause it's car number three.

It's got to be the car that everyone wants to drive.

The need for the DBS to succeed can't be overstated.