When David Brown, bought the Aston Martin Atom in 1947, he was truly impressed by the first post-war time model.

But he wanted the new car to be a drophead, which is why chief engineer Claude Hill, redesigned the chassis, using twin-tubes to make up for some of the stiffness lost by removing the fixed roof. Also an anti-roll bar was added to the front suspension and at the rear the leaf springs were replaced by coils, trailing arms and a Panhard rod.

A new body was then designed by Frank Feeley who was a chief engineer at the Lagonda company that was another David Brown acquisition.

This car was launched at the London Motor Show in 1948 as the Aston Martin Two-Litre Sports, but it could not compete with the Jaguar XK120, launched at the same show.

Aston Martin quickly moved forward to a new car that was a six-cylinder Lagonda engine. This car made its debut in motor racing and later it was adapted for road. This car was called the DB2, because of which the earlier car was retrospectively dubbed the DB1.