Bolstered by the on-screen exploits of Sean Connery in the box office hit Goldfinger , every man, woman, and child with a pulse yearned to own an Aston Martin DB5 in the mid-1960s.

But it didn’t take long before the English marque’s premier grand tourer—and the remarkably similar DB6 that replaced it in 1965—began to appear somewhat long in the tooth.

The task of modernising Aston’s flagship model fell to William Towns, who penned a strikingly modern interpretation of the marque’s trademark look—one that borrowed as much from the transatlantic success story of the Ford Mustang as it did its DB predecessors—to create the handsome and purposeful DBS in 1967.

The new car initially inherited the DB6’s Vantage-spec inline six-cylinder engine, finally being married with its new 5.3-litre Tadek Marek-designed V-8 in 1969, after which it was dubbed the DBS V8.

With the demise of Tadek Marek’s ageing 4-litre inline-six, the grand tourer became known simply as the Aston Martin V8 in 1972.

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