It goes without saying that Lotus has consistently built and engineered some of the best-handling cars since its founding decades ago. And the man responsible for carrying on Colin Chapman's tradition of handling excellence is Matt Becker. For the past 26 years he was tasked with the chassis tuning of all Lotus models. And now he's just jumped ship to Aston Martin, where he will be in charge of vehicle dynamics. What's particularly interesting is that during his tenure at Lotus, Becker worked with his father, Roger Becker.

The elder Becker, who served as vehicle engineering director, retired from Lotus in 2010 after 44 years of service. The younger Becker's title at AM is Chief Engineer for Vehicle Attributes Engineering. His tasks will involve chassis dynamics, aerodynamics, and vehicle durability. So who's responsible for convincing a man of Becker's experience and expertise to jump ship? That'd be AM CEO Andy Palmer, who joined the firm only back in September after a long career at Nissan. Becker will immediately begin work on AM's next generation models, which will be powered by Mercedes-AMG turbocharged V8 engines. His first creation will likely be the next DB9, due to arrive in 2016.