THINGS of BEAUTY

The newest Aston Martin for sale, the DB11 has a 600-horsepower V-12 engine and a striking body silhouette with a “floating” roof

A ston Martin is nothing if not ambitious. To put it bluntly: “We aspire to make the most beautiful cars in the world,” says the automaker’s CEO, Andy Palmer. “That’s what differentiates us. That’s what makes us special.”

While beauty has been a common thread through Aston Martin’s 104 years, it didn’t always drive the conversation the way it does now. When Robert Bamford and Lionel Martin founded the company in 1913, they focused on racing, going bankrupt a couple of times as road car production ramped up in the ’20s. By the ’30s the company began getting noticed for cleverly engineered cars like