[1] Marek was from Kraków and studied engineering at Technische Universität Berlin before working for Fiat in Poland and also for General Motors.
Driving a Chevrolet Master sedan, he won the XII Rally Poland (1939) before moving to Great Britain in 1940 to join the Polish Army.
He joined the Centurion tank Meteor engine development (1944),[3] but returned to Germany, working for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
The Lagonda engine received a new cast iron block with top seating liners, used in the DB Mark III that debuted in 1957.
A prototype was fitted in the mid-'60s in a one-off DB5 extended 4" after the doors and driven by Marek personally,[4] and a normally 6-cylinder Aston Martin DB7 was equipped with a V8 unit in 1998.