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27 January 2026A traveller in time
With retro lines and modern performance the Speedback GT is a definite winner
T he 21st century resonates with polarisation. The ubiquity of cable news and social media has brought about extremes of views and opinions seem to be bereft of facts. This doesn’t stop them from being propounded with absolute conviction, however.
It is hard therefore to hold to TS Eliot’s maxim of a critic having to have the prerequisite attitude of ‘disinterestedness’. To look beyond the superficial pleasure in a subject and analyse it merely on its merits and ethos rather than on the effect said item has on the reviewer is difficult. In consequence I promise to try to review the vehicular offering on these pages with a clinical pen rather than succumbing to the emotions that it stirs within. But please bear with me if I find myself transported into flights of fancy.
Having recognised that today’s society has engendered extremes of views it is easy for us to hark back to yesteryear in the search of an imagined nirvana. As an occasional Proustian exercise this is fun, but today’s actuality dictates that yesterday’s perceived perfection is, in fact, but a rose-tinted reality.
The 1960s was a decade of huge upheaval. The austerity of the war years was fading away and the new liberalisation of youth brought about the advent of rock ’n’ roll and a permissive society. In the motoring milieu there was a sense of schizophrenia.
This most exciting of decades saw the beauty of the Jaguar E-Type and the elegance of the Aston Martin DB5 counterbalanced by the rear-engined, swing-axle lethality of the Chevrolet Corvair, a car so dangerous that Ralph Nader wrote a whole book about it entitled: Unsafe at Any Speed.
David Brown Automotive has offered up to the discerning palate a tourer of genuine beauty and sweeping elegance
The challenge then is how to take the best of our memories with awareness of their fallibility and do justice to the former. Well, David Brown, with no link save initials to Aston Martin's tractor-maker, has taken the DB5 (with other, ancillary, inspirations) as his starting point and made a point of eliminating the stodge and the superfluous in his aim of creating a new icon. As Marcel Proust put it: ‘The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.’ In other words, how can we make the best, better?
By all accounts a big fan of rock band the Who, Brown has drawn inspiration from the middle of the 1960s (when the DB5 was launched) and the auto-destructive art-rockers from West London who had started to make their mark on the music scene.
So to marry DB5 aesthetic inspiration with a Jaguar XKR, which is the fundamental foundation of the chassis and drive train… is it a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
Not a bit of it. What we have is definitively the Speedback GT, a special car in its own right. With an aluminium body and chassis providing structural rigidity and, essentially, a means to keep the rain out of your hair, there is next to no weight to hinder getting the wheels to turn.
Sound can stir your soul like nothing else. Imagine the delightful gurgle of a newborn infant. Or the susurration of trees as a soft summer breeze disturbs the tranquil idyll. These are delicate, transformative noises that soothe and bathe you in psychic balm. Then there’s the Jaguar supercharged V8 that lies throbbing at the heart of this vehicle. With the rumbling, symphonic harmonics of a John Entwistle bass line, this primal monster delivers mountains of torque and performance.
David Brown Automotive has offered up to the discerning palate a tourer of genuine beauty and sweeping elegance
Some would say that the gearbox itself is short on gears but it is definitely long on delivery. Personally I like the 6-speed automatic packaged here rather than an 8-speedbox that you might expect. Longer travel in the ratios means it feels like a proper tourer. It is not, never will be and never should be a car for thrashing round a track. Going fast while being elegant is this car’s sine qua non. Screaming sideways in a cloud of tire smoke into an Armco barrier would be infantile and this is very much a grown-up car.
Breathing new life into the etiolated art of coach building, David Brown Automotive has offered up to the discerning palate a tourer of genuine beauty and sweeping elegance. With the creative input of Alan Mobberley, formerly of Jaguar Land Rover, pivotal, the Speedback GT is less a car than a mechanical work of art. It almost feels insulting to talk so much about the performance of the chassis, engine and gearbox when the true majesty of this car lies in the 8,000 man-hours of build labour including 800 man-hours of paint and finish in each example.
You will spend a lot of time admiring it from the outside, but you will spend most of your time in the cabin. Here is where the modern world is brought to the 1960s experience. Herds of cows have sacrificed themselves for the sake of the owner’s sedentary comfort. Dual-zone climate control, automatic wipers, parking sensors, reversing cameras, soft-close doors and sat nav with Bluetooth and USB connectivity all come as standard. The wooden steering wheel, redolent of the car’s inspiring origins, is a nice touch while the picnic seat, hinged ingeniously into the trunk floor, is a glossy cherry on a finely baked cake.
And gripes? Well, sure, there are a few. Nothing major though. The convex glass on the clock that sits on top of the centre console reflects sunlight and prevents you reading it, but as I was doing this road test in late January there wasn’t too much natural light to worry about. The same held true for the concave wood veneer panels in the door cards that bounced light onto the aluminium window controls. Maybe it was form for form’s sake but, while they did look truly beautiful, there was an impracticality there. It is worth noting, though, that all these parts are available in a number of different finishes.
They aren’t coachbuilders per se, but the value in their products is definitely in that department
My biggest bugbear, though, would be with the infotainment system. This is not a criticism of the electronics and system themselves rather than with the utility of touch-screen navigation via oversized fingers. I can fully understand the company’s decision to use the underlying architecture rather than develop their own chassis, drive train and electronics as not to do so would make an already expensive car a ruinous black hole of R&D costs.
It works and works well, but this is the one part of the bought-in components that you physically interact with and, for me, it mildly offset an otherwise wonderful experience.
Once upon a time those higher up on the fiscal food chain would buy a rolling chassis from the likes of Bentley or Duesenberg and engage the services of specialists like Mulliners or Vanden Plas. Having access to something both beautiful and unique was a great draw. However, with changing fashions and the advent of the unibody manufacturing process most legacy coachbuilders have now closed their doors.
Thankfully David Brown Automotive seems to be bucking the trend. They aren’t coachbuilders per se, but the value in their products is definitely in that department. A starting price of £500,000 before tax might seem like a lot to pay for a car, but the opportunity to own something so striking makes it worth it. The company is just moving into purpose-built facilities at Silverstone and the next car off the line will be a remastered Mini. A reimagined DB5 followed by a Mini … icons of England.
To quote another lyric from the Who, ‘Every day you’ll see the dust, as I drive my baby in my magic bus. I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it.’ I just hope that I have managed to keep my feet firmly enough on the floor to report objectively on this masterpiece. I salute both the vision behind the product and the product itself.
davidbrownautomotive.com