From the Aston Martin DB1 through to the DB9, many of company’s best remembered cars have worn the letters DB, but what do those two letters stand for?
In 1947 David Brown and his tractor company bought out both Aston Martin and Lagonda, and effectively merged the two operations.
From 1950 onwards, Aston Martin, under Brown’s directorship, developed sports coupes, convertibles and roadsters bearing his initials, DB.
Intriguingly the first car to wear to be christened with the DB prefix was actually the 1950 to 1953 Aston Martin DB2. 1948’s new Aston Martin model, the first to be developed under Brown’s ownership, was originally called the Aston Martin 2-Litre Sports, but is now retroactively referred to as the DB1.
Since then one of Aston Martin’s mainline models has worn the DB badge, although the company skipped over the DB8 name in favour of DB9, because it feared that people would think that the car had an 8-cylinder engine rather a V12.
This could mean that there will be no production DB10 model, although the company has produced a limited number of DB10s for the upcoming James Bond film Spectre.
