This is a car with a quite extraordinary history – it appears to have spent over half its life in various forms of storage.
The AML Build sheet indicates it was a factory demonstrator from 2nd October 1968 until December that year when a letter dated just before Christmas from Normand Garage Ltd., and a transfer of warranty letter sent 30th December 1968, to the second owner, a Mr M.S. Vickers, Plantation House, Mincing Lane, London EC5. Following we have little record of its early life, the first we know of the car was when it was acquired in 1992 when it had been standing in a barn for 10 years, with the engine head off, awaiting attention. It was not bought for the Aston Martin heritage but the rather more prosaic reason of a fine registration number.
The car was sent to a restorer in Hailsham in East Sussex where the car was dismantled but they never got round to the job of re-assembly although the engine appeared to be in one piece.
It was fully eight years later that, at the owner’s request, Aston Martin Specialists, Newlands Motors, collected the car from Hailsham in late 2000 and set about restoring the car. They fully expected to have to work on the engine, but running it up after re-assembly, the pressures and all functions were 100%.
There was a brief couple of years of intermittent usage before the car was returned to storage for another 4 years until the current owner asked Newlands Motors to recommission the car which resulted in an invoice value of nearly £8,500.
It was in 2010 that Byron International were asked to market the car on behalf of the owner and she found a new home with an Aston enthusiast in France. And there she has remained for the past 10 years, enjoyed and used very sparingly. Making the decision to part company with the car did not stop the owner in ensuring the mechanicals were in top condition, replacing gaskets and servicing the car as late as December last year.
The ‘four headlight’ DBS has become highly valued and evocative of the seventies. A manual car such as is one of the most sought-after versions, appreciated as both collectible and eminently useable on an everyday basis. With its predecessors, the DB4, DB5, and DB6, still commanding huge premiums on the current value of a DBS for cars of similar condition, this represents an excellent opportunity to acquire a six-cylinder Aston Martin from the hand-built era of the marque.
She is a great car hoping for an owner who will use her for the purpose she was built – to be driven and enjoyed.