Ted Cutting

Edward John 'Ted' Cutting (11 October 1926 – 22 March 2012) was a British automotive engineer. He designed the body, engine, chassis, suspension and fully engineered the Aston Martin DBR1, winner of the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Cutting was born in Clapham, London and educated at Kingston Technical School.

He began his career aged 15 as a draughtsman with the KLG spark plug company. In 1946 he joined the Allard Motor Company where he designed his first complete car and in 1949 moved to Aston Martin. On joining Aston Martin he took part in the DB2 re-design and worked with Eberan von Eberhorst on DB3, DB3S and DP Lagonda V12 cars. In 1955 became Chief Designer for racing cars, producing the DBR1, DBR2 and DBR3 sports racing cars and the DBR4 and DBR5 Formula One cars. In 1961 he became Chief Designer for the Company with Tadek Marek the Chief Engineer and Harold Beech the Technical Director, all working together under John Wyer and ultimately David Brown. From 1962 as Chief Designer his Project racing cars DP212, DP214 and DP215 were conceived purely as prototype racing cars, particularly for long distance races, unique vehicles to gain maximum publicity. DP215 was recorded at 319.6 kilometres per hour (198.6 mph) on the Mulsanne Straight in practice at Le Mans and remains the fastest 6 cylinder front engine Aston ever made.

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