Aston Martin DB5 designer Harold Beach dies

Harold Beach's association with the high-performance car industry began in the 1920s and 30s when he worked on Rolls-Royce, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti and Bentley cars - reports the Australian.

In the early 1950s he joined Aston Martin Lagonda, and made a great contribution to the development of its cars over nearly three decades. He was successively Aston Martin's chief designer, chief engineer and technical director, and was involved in the evolution of some of the company's finest cars, not least those which featured in the Bond films.

Harold Henry Beach was born in Acton, West London, in 1913, and was privately educated before studying engineering at technical college. He began his career in the car industry in 1928 as an apprentice at the Rolls-Royce coachbuilder Barker in London. There he soon moved to the drawing office, an area that would prove to be his forte.

The Viscount Curzon, later Earl Howe, was a director of Barker and used its engineering department to prepare his racing cars. Beach worked on the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 with which Howe and Sir Henry Birkin won the 1931 24 Hours of Le Mans. Other race cars included Howe's Delage and Bugatti, and two Mercedes owned by Howe and Sir Malcolm Campbell.

Working on such machines imbued in Beach a taste for fine cars and when one day he passed an Aston Martin he decided that he would like to own one himself, but dismissed the idea as being out of his reach.

A move as a draughtsman to the commercial vehicle engine-builder William Beardmore in London was short-lived. Beach then joined the former Barker engineering department head James Ridlington at his newly established JR Engineering.

There Beach designed the lightweight, aluminium-framed body for Eddie Hall's 1936 Tourist Trophy Bentley 4 and a quarter Litre. He also co-designed with Rolls-Royce the 48-gallon petrol tank that enabled the Bentley to complete the TT course non-stop to take second place.

With war looming in the late 1930s Beach moved to the specialist manufacturer Garner-Straussler Mechanisation in London, where much of the work was concentrated on prototype all-terrain vehicles designed by the Hungarian engineer Nicolas Straussler.

Among those that Beach helped to develop were the four-wheel-drive Garner-Straussler G3 military chassis powered by two parallel V8 cylinder engines, and the floating Sherman DD tank that saw service during the Normandy landings in 1944.

In September 1950, three years after he was married and keen to be once more involved with cars, Beach obtained a position as a design draughtsman with David Brown Tractors, fully aware that its owner had recently acquired both Aston Martin and Lagonda.

Almost immediately he began designing an evolutionary replacement for the DB2, the DB2/4, soon after which he was appointed chief designer, overseeing the disc brake installation of the DB Mk III.

Appointed chief engineer in 1956, Beach was charged with the overall design of the forthcoming DB4, the basis of which would be an all new platform chassis that was sufficiently rigid to accept the superleggera (super lightweight) construction and mounting of the Aston's beautiful aluminium body. This was the work of Touring of Milan - but not without Beach's input, which included the front wing-side vents, an Aston hallmark ever since. He had designed them to expel under-bonnet heat.

Thereafter he worked closely with the Italian coachbuilder, as well as with the chief racing designer Ted Cutting and Tadek Marek, the Polish designer of Aston's all-new six cylinder, twin camshaft, engine that powered the DB4.

Having relocated in 1957 from the company's headquarters at Feltham, Middlesex, to a new factory at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, Beach would commute from his home in Pinner, Middlesex, to the Newport Pagnell plant, invariably in a different Aston Martin each day, which conveniently and happily formed part of his road-testing duties.

The much acclaimed 1958 DB4 evolved through five series into the 1963 DB5, basically a Series 6 DB4 but with a larger engine, which for several decades would universally be voted the Best Car in the World after its appearances in the James Bond films Goldfinger and Thunderball. By that time Beach was working on the all-new DBS with a body designed by William Towns. Launched in 1967, it finally incorporated the De Dion rear axle and the independent rear suspension that Beach had wanted for the DB4.

After David Brown sold Aston Martin Lagonda in February 1972 to Company Developments, Beach was surprised to hear on the radio in January 1974 that the company had closed. As he was by then technical director, it was left to Beach to brief prospective purchasers, a process that culminated in the businessmen Peter Sprague and George Minden acquiring Aston Martin Lagonda in June 1975.

Although he was nearing retirement, Beach remained with the new owners and his final task was engineering a convertible version of the V8 model, the V8 Volante, drawing on his experience in producing the DB4 Convertible. He finally retired in 1978.

A modest and self-effacing man who eschewed affiliation to the many institutions of which he would have been a worthy member, Beach retained his intelligence undimmed in his final years, notably in June 2008 when he was the star speaker at the DB4's 50th anniversary celebrations at Newport Pagnell.

He died on January 24, 2010, aged 96. His wife, Mabel, died in 1991. He is survived by a stepson.

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