Walter Hayes

How I-

Yeah, so Colin Chapman's like, "Okay, I got this dude's number." So Colin Chapman goes to an old friend, Walter Hayes, who is the head of public affairs at Ford UK.

And a- all of us deal with, like, brands a lot.

Mm-hmm.

He, he has vision

... yeah, yeah.

Walter Hayes has vision.

Like, I would, I would love if we could, if we could get a Walter Hayes on the phone, you know what I mean?

The following year, we show DB7 as a concept car, which I found out only recently.

Walter Hayes, who was the chairman at the time, was being quite bullish.

He put the car at Geneva Motor Show, pulled the cover off it and took orders on the sand for the car.

And Ford hadn't even signed it off.

Yes.

Which really did look quite smart if you had those fitted as well.

this car uh didn't take long to go into production it's only about four months later in january 2004 unlike the db7 because as you said earlier um wasn't getting quite entirely sure we were going to make it until walter hayes said we've got no deposits here we've got to we have to make the car the vanquish was famously delayed by dr betts for reasons we've covered in previous podcasts So four months later, January 2004, the coupe begins production at Gaydon.

So the DB9, why it matters, is the first production car at its new headquarters.