BARNFIND 1934 ASTON MARTIN
First owned by an A-list actor, this almost untouched Aston Martin MkII has re-emerged after half a century in hiding. James Elliott tells its story
Rescued from hiding, now ripe for preservation
One of the great ‘advances’ of this social-media-driven world has been the democratisation of hyperbole. Once largely the preserve of politicians, journalists and advertising copywriters, such lexical exaggeration has become a free-for-all… and inevitably diluted as a result. ‘Iconic’ now roughly equates to ‘quite good’, ‘legendary’ to ‘you might have heard of him/her/it’, and ‘national treasure’ to anyone who is generally presumed to be liked but is wholly inadequate in their chosen publicfacing profession. There’s even an equivalent in our cosy little world: has any word suffered more than ‘barnfind’?
We are all to blame, of course, not least the hacks, dealers and auction houses, but what started as a valid romantic description for that stashed California Spyder discovered in and dragged out of the remote barn where it had been hidden from the world half a century ago, is now equally applied to a dusty Mk3 Escort that has been in a lock-up for four months since the MoT expired. That’s progress, but it’s a bit of a pain when there is a genuine barnfind.
And that’s what we have here, just to prove that they really do still happen. It is a 1934 Aston Martin MkII, which, because of its astonishing originality, not only offers us a near-unique insight into what these cars were like in period, but also is one of the earliest virtually untouched survivors – Aston Martin having barely built 300 cars when this one was constructed. It is known by everyone involved with it as 402, after its chassis B4/402/S. With MkII and Ulster chassis numbers starting at 400, that means this car was actually only the third of the type constructed at Victoria Road, Feltham, in February 1934 and would have been manufactured alongside what is recognised as being in effect the first Ulster, chassis 403.
Coming mid-way through what is known as Aston’s Bertelli era (after driving force AC ‘Bert’ Bertelli), the MkII was developed from the Le Mans, but with a much stiffer chassis, transverse front damping, plus uprated engine and brakes. Today, it is probably the most underappreciated of all the cognoscenti pre-war Astons. After all, production started at the same time as the ultra-desirable Ulster replicas of the team cars, one of which (LM20) came third at Le Mans in 1935, yet the differences barely stretch beyond the cylinder head (the advantages of which have been largely rendered vestigial by technological advances, of which more later), and the chassis number.
Of course, getting into the Mille Miglia is a bit easier in an Ulster, which also could come with more rakish, twoseater bodywork, but does that really warrant the fact that an Ulster will set you back £1.5million, compared with £300,000-400,000 for a good MkII?
For the MkII, Aston Martin steadfastly continued on its commercially foolhardy path of building pretty much everything in-house when other manufacturers were sourcing whatever they could elsewhere and focusing their energies on assembly, which was cheaper. Yes, it has an ENV rear axle and bought-in instruments and lights, but all else, whether brakes or gearbox or even filler cap, was Aston’s own. This insistence on self-sufficiency rather than buying in bulk from Filler Caps R Us helps to explain both why the cars were so expensive new (ferociously so for a 1.5-litre) and why even then the company made no money.
It never has, of course, but that hasn’t stopped a long line of misty-eyed entrepreneurs buying into the dream for more than a century. Aston’s financial history has always been a train wreck: even Bertelli was advised against throwing his lot in, while the Sutherland family chose to finance Aston Martin rather than take on the UK franchise for Coca-Cola. Oops. Ford is reputed to have been on the verge of signing Aston’s death warrant many a time before a small voice whispered to successive managers: ‘Do you really want to be the person who killed Aston?’ Instead, the Blue Oval giant just filched the grille shape and moved on.
As the company’s historian Steve Waddingham says, there is an almost karmic way in which Aston has never left any of its string of suitors entirely destitute: ‘Part of the magic is that no-one was totally destroyed by Aston Martin and everyone walked away and lived more or less happily ever after. Even Lionel Martin. No sooner had the company folded than he inherited a Lincolnshire quarry. It’s almost impossible to put your finger on the allure, but there is something magical about it and it has some weird effect on people even today. There were hundreds of British carmakers in the 1920s and ’30s, many of them very profitable, so it defies all logic that one of the only survivors never made any money at all.’
He is supported by Ecurie Bertelli co-proprietor Robert Blakemore: ‘The exquisite quality and intense craftsmanship of the pre-war cars helps explain how, during those early years, Aston Martin managed to consistently convert the significant interest in, and devotion to, its sports cars into a loss while also explaining the cars’ remarkable survival.’
With his wife Ali, Blakemore has been at the helm of the pre-war Aston specialist for the past seven years. These two pilots bought into it after taking redundancy from FlyBe when they had a young family, but Robert’s Aston history goes back a lot further. He says: ‘I was about ten when I first went in an Aston. My father bought a MkII virtually the same as this one from Morntane Engineering – which became Ecurie Bertelli – then bought a Le Mans, and then he sold both to buy an Ulster. I used to come to this very building as a young teen and watch Ecurie Bertelli restoring the Le Mans and, having first driven a pre-war Aston when
‘It offers us insight into what these cars were like in period, and it’s one of the earliest untouched survivors’
I was 14, as soon as I passed my test at 17 I was insured on and drove the Le Mans. These cars are in my DNA.’
Blakemore first met pre-war Aston guru Andy Bell – known to have driven over 300 of the 450 (of 681 built) pre-war survivors – at the age of 12, and was therefore just the man to take over when Bell wanted to retire. You read that right, by the way: total pre-war Aston production was about half the run of the DB5 alone. Even though the company has never exactly dabbled in mass production (it is expected to make its 100,000th car in 2021, its 108th year in business), that makes the pre-war stock especially rare. And the more you delve into it, the rarer 402 gets. Consider that all MkIIs (short-chassis, long-chassis, Ulster, saloon and so on) totalled 165, that only 61 were 2/4-seaters such as this, that attrition has taken care of a good few of those and that most others have been restored at least once, and this one then seems just a bit special.
That’s why, despite a history with the marque that should make him pretty hard to faze, Robert Blakemore still gets incredibly excited about this rediscovery: ‘We knew where it was, of course, but the barnfind element is when a long-term owner finally decides that they want to do something with a car that is languishing.’
That owner was Tony Bubb from Surrey, who bought 402 in 1962 and ran and raced it until 1969, when he took it off the road with an engine issue. As so often happens, a growing family and a busy engineering business distracted him… for 50 years! Realising he would never get it back on the road, Bubb lined up 402 for auction at Bonhams but, when Covid-19 put paid to that sale, middleman Blakemore stepped in and bought it himself.
‘There are maybe only one or two other examples as original as this in the world,’ he explains. ‘All that I can see that is wrong are the radiator and the retrimmed front seats. This isn’t just rare, it’s once-in-a-lifetime original. There are probably between five and eight cars that we know of that are yet to be restored, but they are too fargone to be conserved in the way that 402 could be. That is what makes this car unique.’
Since 402 came to light, its history has been painstakingly researched by Steve Waddingham, who joined Aston at 19 and has served 27 years, most recently in this new capacity. He has been working with Blakemore and Bell at Ecurie Bertelli as well as the pre-war Aston community to track its past, especially the ‘tricky’ 1920s to 1940s period.
Its first owner was the actor Sir Ralph Richardson, a contemporary of Gielgud and Olivier who, though primarily a stagemeister, also starred in a host of movies including A Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Doctor
‘The owner ran and raced it until 1969, when he took it off the road with an engine issue… for 50 years’
You needed to be very wealthy to buy a new Aston Martin then, but you didn’t need a driving test, which was yet to be introduced and is thought to explain why many cars found their second owners very quickly, having instantly put the frighteners on their first.
In this case, the next known owner after Richardson was ‘Captain’ JH Thomas, who claimed to be number five in the owners’ club and which means he must have owned 402 in 1935. Then came GL Hawkins, someone who kept it only for a couple of years before selling to Leicesterbased Scottish GP Dr Cecil Gibson, who became the Aston Martin Owners’ Club’s chief medical officer and notably invited James Bond, via Ian Fleming, to join the club. Fleming responded that as neither he nor Bond actually owned an Aston Martin, he had forwarded the request to the MI6 motor pool. A Mr GR Edmondson from Woking was the fifth owner, but owned it for barely any time before Tony Bubb snapped it up in 1962 for £365 with a £10 deposit, marginally cheaper than buying a new Mini or Ford Anglia at the time.
So, with 402 now finally liberated from Bubb’s barn, the $64,000 question is: what happens next? Blakemore is not about to tell other people how to spend their money, but he is quietly determined that 402 should be conserved rather than restored: ‘Conservation is always more satisfying than restoration. You can go out and buy a restored MkII quite easily, but this is probably the last one you could buy in this original yet salvageable state.’
Taking the preservation route to putting it back on the road would take about 1500 hours over 10-12 months,
‘You needed to be wealthy to buy a new Aston Martin then, but you didn’t need a driving test’
which is pretty much the same as a restoration anyway. The chassis is solid – Aston’s open C-section means there is nowhere for water to pool, so the pre-war cars usually are – and even the body and ash frame could be retained, but Blakemore would leave the engine options open: ‘This one is totally original and just needed reassembly but usually we recommend that people retain the original on one side and get a new unit for daily use because it is quicker, cheaper, more reliable… and preserves the original as it should be.’
This not only overcomes a design fault that’s exacerbated on 90-year-old metal – blocks crack because of weak, exposed stud holes too close to the bores – but, with mods, will give 6000rpm in standard spec and 7000rpm for a racer, and some 110bhp instead of the 73 of the original. That’s performance that outstrips even the Ulsters.
Having started delving into 402’s past, Waddingham agrees that the fingerprints of history should not be wiped from it: ‘As an historian, to have a car for which you can find pretty much all the history going back to day one is one-off. And to have that history not only on paper, but embodied in and imprinted on every inch of the metal, wood and leather, as in this car, is almost unprecedented. The big thing for me is to confirm that the person I think was owner number two [Capt Thomas] buy it very early on because that would mean it’s had only six owners from new, which would be amazing.’
I agree with them both, of course, because Aston should be about so much more than James Bond and Le Mans 1959; it should encompass Prince Bira, Count Zborowski and real-life spy St John Horsfall, whose most famous mission was actually devised by Ian Fleming. But then it is not my money and I am a hopeless old car romantic.
What I tell you, having driven a MkII on the road (on Avons) in the past, is that once the conservation/ preservation/restoration is complete, the new owner will be in the glorious position of experiencing exactly how little Aston Martin has deviated from its mission since Day One. It has never wavered from delivering exciting and fine-handling, nimble two- and four-seaters, and the MkII is no different. They are wonderful cars to drive, understeering slightly and allowing you to pilot them on the throttle and set up endless predictable four-wheel drifts (especially on loose surfaces), so gentle and with never a hint of snap. Even with a standard, original engine it can easily keep up with modern traffic, though with ’flowing and other mods you can lollop along at 70mph and hit 90 with ease. The Aston brakes, which are surprisingly good, can stay standard. A MkII is so usable you can go pretty much anywhere and do anything in it. Quick and nimble enough to be competitive on any event; comfortable, reliable and civilised enough to drive there in. Or just go to the pub in it. Over to you…