Marek Reichman
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AS A PRIMARY school kid in 1970s Sheffield, Marek Reichman would race downhill – ‘40mph without brakes!’ – on a soapbox built with his older brother Julian. By 2005, the kid from the northern estate had been shortlisted to lead the design team of arguably the most beautiful car brand of all, following the departure of Henrik Fisker.
Now, 16 years and two bosses later, Reichman remains chief creative officer of Aston Martin, with oversight of the 68 automotive design staff (20 more are deployed elsewhere) currently engaged on 14 design programmes in the Aston studio.
In the intervening years he’s reinvented Aston’s design language, introduced continuation DB4 GT, DB4 GT Zagato and DB5 ‘Goldfinger’ models (a little trickier than you might guess), and amassed an eclectic car collection of his own, including a gorgeous DB2/4, which he’s raced.
Yet part-way through his interview with company boss Ulrich Bez in 2005, Reichman’s gut said the odds were against him. ‘Ulrich was really drilling me, saying he didn’t like things in my portfolio,’ recalls Reichman, who’d flown in from Detroit after an 18-month stint with Aston’s parent company, Ford. ‘Half an hour became two hours, but I felt it was going so badly.’ Some surprise, then, to have Bez offer him the job once he’d
