At 02:35 PM 11/11/96 -0500, you wrote:
>No comment on this one. Allright maybe one comment:
>
>I think FORD sucks now matter what car companies it owns, BMW is a good
>owner for MG. FORD has taken the AM DB7 and made it look just like the Jag
>XK8, wait maybe they took the XK8 and made it look like the DB7. Now
>imagine if they owned MG and Triumph. Would you MGers want an MG that
>looks like a TR, I think not.
Kai,
I don't think I perhaps qualified my last email very well as to what I
meant. Ford had no hand in the design of the shape for the DB7, that was
pure and utter Aston, it is an interesting exercise to look at the side
profiles of a DB4 and DB7, guess what they're nearly identical :-)
The history of the DB7 is that it was nearly the Jaguar XK7 until some
bright spark realised that it was too expensive to be a Jag, but would make
a cheap Aston, at which time the design for the outward shape of the car was
passsed over.
I was fortunate enough to spend some time down at Newport Pagnell where
Aston are based when they were restoring a friends DB6, and what I implied
from my previous email was the fact that although Ford own Aston, they have
left them to their own devices, the aside from a little modernistation (the
only sign being that they now have ramps that go up in the air rather than
pits ;-)), the cars are still built by hand, new Vantages and Volantes down
the left hand side, vintage DB2's, 3's, 4's, 5's and 6's being restored down
the right.
My belief is that this type of approach, ie. leave them alone but let them
use what they need from the group is better than what appears to be the BMW
approach, there is a TV program on over here at the moment called "When BMW
met Rover", and its really not very pretty....
Andrew
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