Brenner

Picking the ‘best-looking’ car from Aston Martin’s extensive back catalogue of stunning designs is, let’s be frank, a mug’s errand. After all, this is the company responsible for such icons as the DBR1 (the only Browns Lane creation to win Le Mans outright), the DB4 GT Zagato, and of course the DB5, perhaps the most iconic ‘film car’ of them all and one selected for ‘Bond work’ chiefly because of its otherworldly good looks, underpinned of course by class-leading performance. 

Aston Martin’s CV of previous models is as compelling as it is exotic, in short, and so its cars have long featured on the Retropower radar. The models outlined above all have their charms and indeed their champions within the Retropower workforce, but really, when the chips are down, the Astons we’ve always admired the most are those whose lines were penned by the late, great William Towns. These cars—the DBS, the Vantage, and the V8 Vantage—helped redefine Aston for the nineteen-seventies and beyond, helping the company move away from the flowing, curvaceous designs that it had traded in up to this point, offering up bluff, chisel-jawed good looks and barely restrained menace as an alternative. 

Given this, it won’t be in the least bit surprising that we at Retropower leapt at the chance to build a one-off William Towns Aston of our own when the opportunity arose at the start of 2024. The car in question was a mid ’70s DBS, and the brief was deceptively simple: produce a one-off car that built upon all the praise the DBS was garnered with upon its launch, with plenty of power but also the ability to cross continents with calm, cosseting ease. It was, in essence, a cracker of a brief and one we couldn’t wait to get stuck into. 

Jump forward some months, and we’re pleased to announce that big strides forward have been made. We took delivery of the car in October of 2024 and immediately set about 3D scanning it inside and out, top to bottom and back to front. The reason for this was simple: we plan on undertaking a number of bodywork revisions, and so dimensionally accurate data from which to work from in CAD was a pre-requisite. George and Luke swung into action, and the result is that, at the time of writing, the exterior appearance of what has since come to be called ‘Project Brenner’ has already started to take preliminary shape, albeit in digital form via CAD software. 

Not that we’re in the position to start actioning anything composite at this point in time, not given the amount of work the Aston’s OE bodywork will require first. For the uninitiated, Astons from this era were assembled around a semi monocoque body tub, onto which aluminium exterior panels were ‘clinched’ and riveted. Aston no doubt intended for this to be both lightweight and stiff, which it was, but fifty years of exposure to the great British weather had left this DBS looking more than a little dishevelled by the time it came to us in 2024, and in dire need of some restorative metalwork.

Thus Matt, a man with an impeccable grounding in British classics of the Aston’s ilk and era, has been working on the DBS pretty much constantly since we first stripped it down, with the front ‘end’ (including the wheel arches and trailing edges of the wings) and rear three-quarters being the principal recipients of his graft and expertise. For other panels, those deemed simply too far gone to save, we’ve turned to the UK’s extensive ‘cottage industry’ of classic and performance car specialists, primarily ASR Motor Body Engineering in Irchester, Northamptonshire. 

We’ve learnt over the years that few topics are as potentially ‘prickly’ as engine choice, and we doubt that ‘Project Brenner’ will be any different. The engine we’ve selected for this build, following extensive consultation with its owner, is the LT-1 V8, the successor to GM’s long-running LS series of small block V8s and a motor first seen in the 2013 shape Camaro. It’s proven, well-packaged, modern, and makes strong power figures (450 bhp and upwards) with ease, making it pretty much ideal for a build of this sort. 

Just as pertinently, we feel that the LT engine is thematically suited to the project and this generation of Aston. After all, the DBS was intended as a grand tourer, capable of transporting those inside with effortless, well-appointed ease, and, given Aston Martin itself added a V8 to the range in due course, substituting an identically arranged (albeit much more modern) engine makes a great deal of sense. 

Our extensive raiding of GM’s expansive ‘parts bin’ doesn’t end with the engine, either; a long-winded correspondence with Detroit has recently borne fruit with the upshot that we’ve been granted permission to utilise Chevrolet’s CAD database via its ‘SEMA Programme’, with which we’ll be able to design a custom chassis for ‘Project Brenner.’ This means we can utilise proven mechanicals such as Corvette C7 suspension upright and wishbones, hubs and brakes, as well as a 2015-era Camaro ‘rear end’ and differential, and integrate them within our own chassis architecture. 

The Aston’s interior will also be a similarly bespoke affair, and while it’s far, far too early for us to be able to share with you renders of our initial concepts in this area, what we can say is that comfort will be of paramount concern, what with ‘Brenner’ being conceived as a long-distance grand tourer. Therefore, you can expect a smattering of classy materials, extensive use of custom billet components, and of course the input of our incredibly talented in-house trimmer, Richard Ommer. Watch this space, in other words. 

At this point in time, ‘Project Brenner’ is an undertaking in its preliminary stages, but, as is the case with all our builds, the best means of staying up to date with our progress is via our social media feeds and our dedicated YouTube channel. This is home to our long-running weekly video series, ‘Retropower Uncut,’ with new episodes ‘landing’ every Sunday evening at 7pm. Please feel free to head over to our channel and give us a like and a subscribe, and let us know what you think of our plans for the Aston Martin DBS.