The first British Supercar. Built to compete with the Ferrari BB, Porsche 911 Turbo and Lamborghini Countach. But the only one to offer four reasonably proper rear seats.
I bought this car in 2018, it’s my third Aston V8. There’s nothing like these cars. My first was a 1971 DBS V8 bought at a Coys auction in Maastricht in 2005 where I paid just £11,000. My aim was an Aston before I was 30 years old and I just made it. It seemed a bargain to me, nobody wanted them with that troublesome Bosch Mechanical Fuel Injection. I kept it for seven years and poured every spare penny into it. The bills were ruinous, it was not a great example and even though I sold it for 5 times the purchase price thanks to a rising market I’d be amazed if I broke even.
Almost — but not always. There are still cars for which a basic continuous trickle is the safer choice: very early classics whose electrical systems weren’t designed to be probed by a microprocessor, vehicles with sensitive ECUs that don’t respond well to the pulse of a desulfation cycle, anything where the owner has fitted a lithium pack that needs its own dedicated maintainer. Knowing which is which is part of the job.
With the Aston sold, I moped about as a regular non-Aston owning guy. Cars would come and go during and after the sale but none effected me like selling the Aston did. So in 2015 I bought a 1972 Aston Martin V8 project that had been stripped down, bodywork started and everything in boxes. The engine had been rebuilt by a specialist and that was a big bonus. Over the next 5 years, the car was rebuilt to my exact spec. Manual gearbox to replace the 3 speed Chrysler Torqueflite, Olive green metallic with a tan interior. But in 2018, before the car was completed, my dream Aston came on the market. An early V8 Vantage, this was the ultimate car for me. It was a project, and needed huge amounts of work but I had to buy it. This meant the 72 had to be sold and it went to a lovely gentleman in Germany who still has the car and keeps me updated.
Work didn’t commence until 2022 and isn’t completed yet. But the bodywork is repaired, all the rust removed and accident damage sorted, and the car has been painted and looks amazing. Hopefully the car will be back on the road in 2027…