In the first week of February 1962, John Wyer called me into his office on the Monday and said, ‘I want to go to Le Mans with a new car.’ You’re joking!’, I said. ‘No, I’m serious. What can you do? And I don’t want just a DB4 tarted up. I want a five-speed box, so use the S532; I want a de Dion axle with outboard brakes and I want it at least three weeks before Le Mans so we can test it.’”

And that is how Aston Martin’s Chief Designer, Ted Cutting, recalled the birth of the Project Cars. This was, in fact, prompted by some of Aston Martin’s dealers, who felt a successful racing programme would help them sell Astons, although demand for the sensational DB4 was already way beyond the company’s capacity.

Owner David Brown was none too keen on the idea but John Wyer, formerly racing Team Manager and now General Manager of Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd, decided to bite the bullet, despite the fact he still had the enormous task of getting the DB4 into proper production. Also, throughout 1961 he had been at loggerheads with Brown, who insisted a DB4-based four-door Lagonda be produced as well. A racing programme was something Wyer could have done without but, having committed Aston to it, he had to see it through. It was from the new Lagonda saloon (designed by Tadek Marek, also responsible for Aston’s new 3.7-litre engine) that Ted Cutting took the de Dion rear axle for his new racer, to be known as Design Project 212. He added both the torsion bars and the trailing links from the DBR2 and put them together on a shortened DB4 GT chassis powered by a 3996cc wet-sump version of the 3.7-litre engine. The 212 was not ready for the 1962 Le Mans Test Weekend, but an undeveloped version of the engine was fitted to an ex-John Ogier lightweight Zagato.