Anyone know if Fred Hartley still on the go?
Discussion
Seriously, this is not a gentleman that I had heard about before. However, looking on the internet search pages, I see quite a few references, which might make interesting reading (re. AM history).
If anyone can access 192.com, they are showing addresses for 59 Frederick Hartleys in UK. There might be some clues there.
Mr J.R. Hartley...... HONEST !Fred Hartley and Roger Stowers were key people at Aston Martin in the 1960's and 1970's through the DB5-DBSV8 era, through William Willson, 'Company Developments' and all the upheavals which ultimately ended up with the sale of the company to Ford. George Minden and Peter Sprague are owed a great deal by AM enthusiasts for saving the company, and eventually passing it to Ford, which was the start of another brilliant period in the company's history.
Roger Stowers, who was also a historian of the marque and wrote several books, one of which 'The Power behind Aston Martin' I have a copy of, died a year or two back. I am really surprised no-one seems to have heard of Fred Hartley.
Roger Stowers, who was also a historian of the marque and wrote several books, one of which 'The Power behind Aston Martin' I have a copy of, died a year or two back. I am really surprised no-one seems to have heard of Fred Hartley.
dieter - I mentioned the following article on this forum a while ago, when I discovered it.
In case you have not read it, I am sure that you will find it interesting.
What fascinated me, was the first hand nature of the account. I wonder if Mr. Hartley (who is mentioned in the article), ever wrote about his time at Aston Martin?
http://sprague.com/blog/aston-martin/
Jon39 said:
dieter - I mentioned the following article on this forum a while ago, when I discovered it.
In case you have not read it, I am sure that you will find it interesting.
What fascinated me, was the first hand nature of the account. I wonder if Mr. Hartley (who is mentioned in the article), ever wrote about his time at Aston Martin?
http://sprague.com/blog/aston-martin/
An interesting and enjoyable article.In case you have not read it, I am sure that you will find it interesting.
What fascinated me, was the first hand nature of the account. I wonder if Mr. Hartley (who is mentioned in the article), ever wrote about his time at Aston Martin?
http://sprague.com/blog/aston-martin/
Only had time to read a few paragraphs,will read it all tonight.
Thanks for posting.
Sal.hartley said:
Sadly, my father, Fred Hartley died in 2003. He did not write about his times in AM but spoke of them often.
It is very kind of you to contribute to this topic (now 5 years old). So sorry to read about your loss.
Owners of modern Aston Martins very much appreciate the efforts of so many individuals, who have all contributed to the survival of the Company. Without them, we would not be able to enjoy our cars now.
I notice that my link above to Peter Sprague’s historical article no longer works. Their family website has been altered, but the following link should take you to the article.
https://sprague.com/aston-martin/
Edited by Jon39 on Friday 11th January 17:57
Many thanks for coming onto the PH site and telling us of this. I am so sorry to hear that he has died, he cannot have been very old. I met him in 1972, when he organised a factory tour for me. A most impressive gentleman, who managed Aston Martin through some glorious but very turbulent and difficult times. Some other Aston owners I know from the 70’s and 80’s era of low volume hand built gentlemen’s GT cars remember him well, but as you can see very few from the Ford and Gaydon period. Perhaps the definitive history of AM has still to be written.
What is not perhaps obvious is that this was the era of the handmade British GT. Cars are simply not made that way any more. And while Aston Martin struggled to sell these in sufficient quantity to make themselves financially secure (IMHO because their natural customer base, the wealthy sporting gentlemen and high end secret agents were in short supply - those were days of socialism industrial strife and hard brass businessmen) they built extraordinary cars of incalculable quality and value, any one of which in good condition is probably worth around £250k today. The AM customers and enthusiasts of that time recognised that.
Aston Martin survived - where are Bristol, Jensen, Alvis, Jowett, Talbot, Horch, Darracq, Delage etc. now?
From the DB2/4 through the DBR1, Le Mans, DB4, DB5, DB6, William Towns Lagonda to the V8 Vantage they may not have made money but they did something more important. They made a legend. That legend did more than anything else to make Aston Martin the brand it is today and possibly a brand that whatever the difficulties, is too strong to die, ever.
We owe that to Fred Hartley and a small group of men of similar character. It can’t have been easy. God bless him.
Aston Martin survived - where are Bristol, Jensen, Alvis, Jowett, Talbot, Horch, Darracq, Delage etc. now?
From the DB2/4 through the DBR1, Le Mans, DB4, DB5, DB6, William Towns Lagonda to the V8 Vantage they may not have made money but they did something more important. They made a legend. That legend did more than anything else to make Aston Martin the brand it is today and possibly a brand that whatever the difficulties, is too strong to die, ever.
We owe that to Fred Hartley and a small group of men of similar character. It can’t have been easy. God bless him.
Edited by cardigankid on Sunday 13th January 09:58
These are two brief extracts from Peter Sprague's article, and include a reference to Mr. Fred Hartley.
The 1974/75 closure, and the beginnings of the subsequent rescue of Aston Martin.
' The name Aston Martin conjures up images of elegance and power. These images are not supported by the factory visage in Newport Pagnell; a hodgepodge of brick additions sprawled inelegantly around “Sunnyside,” the headquarters building, a dilapidated small faux Tudor house of modest pretensions built for Mr. Salmons early in the 19th century.
An announcement was posted on a few doors that told everyone to meet at the cinema in town the next morning. Ironically the theater was owned by the daughter of one of the Salmons family descendents and was one of the last private movie theatres in England. (It is now part of a shopping block.)
At the meeting, marketing manager Fred Hartley welcomed everyone and introduced Michael Clark. The company was pronounced bankrupt and Michael was the receiver. The creditors were in control. The terms of redundancy were explained. In most cases there were no jobs to go back to. The Service Department would stay open but the factory would remain locked.
Craftsmen had been making wheeled vehicles in Newport Pagnell since 1820. Before Aston Martin there was Tickfords, who made carriages, and then later bespoke automobile bodies, and before Tickfords there was Salmons who made bread wagons and hearses. A few of the men and women at the cinema that day had family who had worked at the same location for four generations. The pubs must have been busy that gloomy Monday evening.
The next day the press announced to the world that Aston Martin was bankrupt and closed. ' .....
..... ' I had been to the factory in the early 60s with my future brother in law and again in the late 60s when we shipped the DB4 to Newport Pagnell to acquire a sunroof. I had wanted to take a factory tour but was not important enough to get one. I still had a sense of the people and the craftsmanship from my visits, a feeling that anyone who visited “the Works” in those days must have felt. It was far from Detroit mass production; far from the microelectronics that I was involved with—it was a special place that brought to life prewar photographs of a different world.
I emerged from the tub frustrated by Aston’s demise, and announced the news to my family in the kitchen with the comment, “Why did that have to happen?” Off and on over the next two days we kept returning to the question of why Aston had to go out of business. Finally Tjasa brought my complaining into focus. “Why don’t you do something about it?” I had been up to my neck in hot water when I read the news. I did not realize that that was just the beginning.
I turned to a young friend who was staying with us, Morris Hollowell, and said that if he could get me the name and telephone number of the managing director in England I would call him up and possibly go over to England after the weekend. Morris tracked down Rex Woodgate, who represented Aston in the US. Rex volunteered the name of Charles Warden and his phone number. I called Charles and briefly introduced myself. We agreed that I would come over after the weekend. I reserved a room at the Dorchester, flew over on Sunday and was met by a V8 from the factory on Monday morning.
I was the perfect person to get involved in Aston Martin. I was 35 years old. I knew nothing about any aspect of the car business. I had never been inside the factory or met any Aston luminaries other than Rex Woodgate. I was not as impressed as I should have been that the British economy was in terrible shape, The Financial Times stock index was at 176—today it is over 4,000. There were even discussions of a possible intervention by the World Bank. Things were grim, but I was cheerful—I truly did not understand the situation.
On the positive side I had had some experience with startups and troubled companies. At the ripe age of 26 I became Chairman of National Semiconductor when the company was coming out of receivership. By 1970 National was on the NYSE. I had learned entrepreneurship by starting a chicken farm in Iran with Iranian, Lebanese and American partners. By 1975 we had 27,000 tons of cold storage capacity in Tehran and Khoramshar. Instead of raising 3,000,000 chickens it was easier to import 100,000,000 frozen chickens from Europe. I had also become involved in a number of other enterprises along the way, both failures and successes. But no car companies, large or small.
My education consisted of political science at Yale and MIT and economics at Columbia. My first job at age 17 was as a photographer for The Berkshire Evening Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass. I continued as a photographer with UPI in Russia in 1959 covering the ‘kitchen debates’ of Khrushchev and Nixon. Tjasa and I visited Outer mongolia for UPI in 1960. We were the third and fourth Americans to make the trip after WWII. We had been preceded by Owen Lattimore and Harrison Salisbury.
In 1970 I lost a Congressional race against Ed Koch in NY. A less than perfect background for the upcoming events at Aston. I did have a lot of energy. I did not have enough money to buy a car company.
It is possible that I would not have become seriously involved with Aston if I had not been ensnared by the British press. When I arrived late in the morning of January 6, 1975 in Newport Pagnell, I was astonished to find 30 – 40 reporters and photographers elbowing each other in an enthusiastic scrum around the V8 the company had sent to pick me up. One question that was asked was “Who are you?” I announced that I wasn’t anybody. That really raised the interest level. Charles Warden desperately wanted to keep alive the possibility that Aston could be saved. It seems that I was the first to show interest. He had called members of the press and announced that “an American” was coming over to save the company. I was a thin straw to grasp. '
Link to the full article - https://sprague.com/aston-martin/
What a great read, thanks for posting the link.
I quite like this passage:
"The V8 engine, however, was developed and manufactured in-house. I personally felt that if you did not build your own engine you were not really building your own car. It was at the heart of the matter. "
How times have changed indeed.
I quite like this passage:
"The V8 engine, however, was developed and manufactured in-house. I personally felt that if you did not build your own engine you were not really building your own car. It was at the heart of the matter. "
How times have changed indeed.
Yes, and maybe those days will return, the way that bespoke coach building seems to be coming back. But it is a matter of technology. When Fred Hartley was Sales Director in the early 70’s, what Aston Martin did was the best you could get. They didn’t take shortcuts the way Jensen and De Tomaso did by buying in big American V8’s. The character of the 4 litre straight six and the 5.3 litre V8 set AM apart, indeed I would say that the sound of Aston Martin today is defined by the old six.
But, as RR discovered as well, times move on and as in warfare, technology is king. You cannot be the best in the world unless you use the best technology and at this moment that is only available to you if you are tied in with one of the big players. Therefore I applaud AM’s relationship with Mercedes Benz, and only wish it would get closer, as this would guarantee AM the financial and technical muscle to do what they do best. One day when it makes sense they may well build wholly or substantially their own engine. But to do that they have to survive and prosper, and in no way is an engine adapted from a current tech AMG twin turbo V8 comparable with a crated 7.2 litre Chrysler such as used in the Jensen SP. Not that this is a criticism of the American V8. It is cheap reliable power. But the Merc engine is state of the art by any standards.
Anyway, I don’t wish to reopen this thorny debate on which I respect everyone’s views, I only want to salute an apparently unrecognised Aston Martin hero.
But, as RR discovered as well, times move on and as in warfare, technology is king. You cannot be the best in the world unless you use the best technology and at this moment that is only available to you if you are tied in with one of the big players. Therefore I applaud AM’s relationship with Mercedes Benz, and only wish it would get closer, as this would guarantee AM the financial and technical muscle to do what they do best. One day when it makes sense they may well build wholly or substantially their own engine. But to do that they have to survive and prosper, and in no way is an engine adapted from a current tech AMG twin turbo V8 comparable with a crated 7.2 litre Chrysler such as used in the Jensen SP. Not that this is a criticism of the American V8. It is cheap reliable power. But the Merc engine is state of the art by any standards.
Anyway, I don’t wish to reopen this thorny debate on which I respect everyone’s views, I only want to salute an apparently unrecognised Aston Martin hero.
Sal.hartley said:
Sadly, my father, Fred Hartley died in 2003. He did not write about his times in AM but spoke of them often.
Hey Sal,Your Father, Fred, lived behind us until his sad passing.
My Mum & Dad (Dad sadly also passed last year) spoke to your Mum and Dad often. Such a lovely couple.
Had a HUGE Garage that had some lovely cars moving around and I do recall an Aston Martin 👍🏼
Hope you are well.
Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year to one and all 🎄
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