OWNING THE 1934 ASTON MARTIN MKII SPECIAL SPORTS SALOON

‘They’re a very expensive car to restore properly, so a lot are botched up,‘ explains Robert Blakemore, MD of pre-war Aston specialist Ecurie Bertelli. He adds, ‘Because the cost is so high compared to their overall value, you tend to get people chopping them up to make Ulster replicas.’

When, in 1991, a new owner finally handed over chassis number L4/524/L to Wakefield and Sons of Byfleet, the car had already seen a lot of ad hoc repairs. The sliding roof had been plastered over.

‘It’s not unusual – if something like the sunroof leaks on one of these, you see a lot of quick fixes,’ laments Blakemore. The once-opening windows were screwed into the bodywork and underbonnet supports had at some time been hacksawed short to give room for a gravity-fed fuel tank, the pump having presumably failed a long time in the past. Most worrying, on a structural level, the boot had been refashioned, bringing the spare wheel inside the car. Supporting timbers in the frame had been cut.

‘In the end, they decided it was cheaper to simply use a different body,’ Blakemore explains. Ironically, one had become available from a car that had itself been made into an Ulster replica.

The replacement body had all the correct fittings, including the external spare wheel, and was delivered to Wakefield’s to fit. However, once stripped down, the new shell revealed its own collection of poorly executed repairs, so it was decided to retain only the wood frame and have new aluminium body panels made. While nearby G&A Fabrications set about fashioning the skins, Wakefield’s still had work to do on the frame – more amateur repairs to eradicate and (original builders’) inconsistencies side-to-side. The work was made harder by the lack of patterned parts to work from. Fortunately, another MKII saloon owner allowed his car to be dismantled for the restorers to make patterns for the new parts.

In 1993 the car was completed and, running on a loan engine while its own was also being restored, the Aston completed a 2000-mile Canadian trek. While still fitted with its borrowed motor, the Special Sport won its class at the Pebble Beach Concours in 1997.