RETURN OF A CLASSIC
Aston Ma in faithfully recreates one of its most iconic spo s cars, right down to the suppliers it used
MY LOVE AFFAIR with Aston Martin began in 1995 when James Bond raced against a Ferrari F355 GTS while hurtling down a winding mountain road in his own Aston Martin DB5. I was a kid back then, and for a long time after watching GoldenEye, I thought the champagne cooler concealed under the centre arm rest was a standard feature in all Aston Martin vehicles.
Two decades later, my passion for the British marque remains strong, fuelled in equal parts by 007’s vehicular exploits and the luxury brand’s heritage.
While the DB5 may be the most iconic model in Aston Martin’s automotive stable thanks to James Bond, its predecessor the DB4 was the one that cemented the automaker’s motorsport legacy. Prior to the DB4’s introduction, Aston Martin engineers were hard at work on a GT variant that was meant to be unleashed on racetracks. A prototype, badged as the DB4 GT and driven by British race car driver Stirling Moss, won the Fordwater Trophy back in 1960. It was just one of the many racing accomplishments that Aston Martin had been racking up in that period, with the most notable being its 24 Hours of Le Mans victory the year before.
The DB4 GT was then the fastest road legal production car. Just 75 examples were built between 1959 and 1963, and many are still around in a testament to Aston Martin’s exemplary engineering; one will fetch over £3 million on the open market today.
In late 2016, Aston Martin announced that it was faithfully recreating the DB4 GT with the same techniques used to build the original, which included beating the aluminium body by hand and even using the same component suppliers. But there are modern safety accoutrements of course, including a roll cage, racing-grade bucket seats and a fire extinguisher.
Dubbed the DB4 GT Continuation
(pictured in this spread), each car requires 4,500 man hours to build and is a throwback to the days of yore before electronic aids and slick tyres were introduced, back when racing was more an art than a science. A 4.2-litre straight-six sits at the front of the car, mated to a four-speed manual gearbox. There are neither traction control nor anti-lock braking systems here; the driver must count on his own skills at the steering wheel to tame and unleash the behemoth at appropriate moments.
Aston Martin has built 25 of these beauties ‒ an ambitious undertaking considering that the car is only made for the track, yet every single one of these £1.5 million beauties has already been spoken for. Incidentally, two of them are bound for Singapore, for an order by a local vintage car collector. Unfortunately, there is still no champagne cooler. AM