The first Aston Martin One-77 crash..

Mind you there are now at least 2 fellows who helped design this car that are on this FerrariChat site.. you may know who the other is.. yet it always seems inevitable to see the product that you worked on unfortunately being crashed in an accident..

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/05/29/and-then-there-were-76-aston-martin-one-77-wrecked-in-hong-kong/

Cheers,
Mike

 

I was one of them.. also worked in the Aston Martin studio in Gaydon during the early design stages. The other person, I'll leave it up to him to mention it... plus I'm new here on this site.

Cheers,
Mike

PS.. here's some pics that I took back then spending time on the weekends touring around back then... stopped in at Silverstone, you should like them being an Aston Martin fan.

http://www.wincom.net/mnllehti/Silverstone.html

 

That's cool to hear Rob, here's some more pics I took at the Heritage Museum, it's a museum in the middle of the Jag / Land Rover / Aston Martin design complex in Gaydon... I'm the knucklehead sitting in the antique yellow car.. got a pic of my wife too checking out an old green antique.. we had a great time touring around.

http://www.wincom.net/mnllehti/Heritage_Museum.html

A Viper owner I knew in England, picked me up from my hotel and we went to a Supercar show one weekend at the same museum..

http://www.wincom.net/mnllehti/Supercar_Show.html

I'm not anyone special that's for sure.... Yet, always enjoyed cars, and especially Aston Martins, Ferraris, Lambos, etc.. growing up as a kid. I drew cars in grade school, grew up in a rough part of town in Windsor (Ontario, Canada) across the river form Detroit, where my dad worked in the Chrysler plants on the line. One year I won a science fair with a scaled down wind tunnel project (fabricated using a fridge fan, a household furnace duct pipe, dry ice for smoke, plexiglass viewing window) in grade 8 using 1:25 scale model cars (an old 1940 Plymouth vs. a Countach), and not even knowing it... that was going to be my career / life..

I got to work at Chrysler in Auburn Hills, worked in the Viper engineering group too (why I have one..), Ford in Dearborn, and GM. Did stuff for other companies too, like Tesla, RUF working at suppliers in the past decades.

Obviously can't say much due to confidentiality agreements, but in general to share my past experience working at the Aston Martin design studio was very cool. The studio is a separate building, pebble stone walkways outside, beautiful, all oak and glass. All sorts of new Aston Martin cars in the parking lots and some old classics on display inside the main building. Working on the second floor looking down at the clay models, one 2 story wall of glass windows letting natural light into the studio. The working environment was very nice, top notch, even having an espresso machine, and even the garbage cans at our desk were stainless, there was a very strict rule of cleaniness and appearance. All the folks in the assembly plant next door had Aston Martin black clothing as dress code. Music was playing in the background in the studio all the time, many times hearing James Bond movie songs, ironically I have a Omega Seamaster wrist watch too. I met the lead folks in charge of design and engineering. It was wild to think even being there, like I said, growing up in rough times, wish my dad was still alive to share the experience, as it was something to be proud of being automotive enthusiasts. I had buddy who worked next door at the Jaguar facility in Gaydon, we met up with lunch, hit some pubs after work, it's a small world in the car design field, because we worked together at Ford in Michigan at one time. The supplier that I worked for was comprised of some really knowledgable folks, as one of them is also on this Ferrari site, it was a great team. There was so much passion at the Aston Martin studio, the efforts in styling the car, the art, even the effort they made made to tune the exhaust note.

I'm near the end of my career now, have some non-automotive design stuff going on being more independent now, perhaps why I'm lurking this Ferrari site now, my next mission is to hopefully look into getting a 599 if all works out well over the next year, that's my goal.. I just love that car.

Well that's my babbling.. thanks for the chat, sharing the childhood dream we had in common and enjoying the pics, have a good weekend.
Mike

PS.. also got to meet the drivers that won that year, and got a signed poster, and another pic of stuff I kept from the job..
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