This Well-Used Aston Martin DB2/4 Is Classic Car Perfection

When we normally bring you a story featuring a classic sports car, it’s a low-mileage garage queen that’s being auctioned for some silly price, and we usually pass comment that it’s a shame that it will probably never be used as its maker intended.

Welcome to the perfect antithesis of that. This absolutely stunning 1957 Aston Martin DB2/4 MkII wears the patina accumulated through decades of fearless use, dating back even to when the right-hand drive car still wore its original black paint.

One of just 199 MkIIs made over a two-year run, and differentiated from the MkI by updated bodywork now totally controlled by David Brown, chassis number AM300/1293 was first sold through Cyril Williams Motors Ltd in Staffordshire. Eventually it found its way, paint replaced by distressed bare-metal charm, to the California desert.

Still in working order it was purchased by Aston Martin collector and specialist Don Rose in 2008, who sent it for a complete mechanical restoration on the strict condition that the bodywork patina wouldn’t be touched. This car had been used, and used properly. Why delete the evidence of a life well lived?

Don himself then spent several years rallying the car before it fell victim in 2011 to a collapsed storage facility roof while parked with 35 other rare classics. The heavily dented roof was knocked back into shape by RM Auto Restoration, but in keeping with the rest of the bodywork, the panel’s many small dimples were left in place.

Over time the charming ‘press on regardless’ sticker has become chipped and worn, while the current owner, custodian of the car for the last six years, has added further sympathetic references to its age and condition like the ‘can’t be crushed’ graphic on the boot.

It’s now up for sale again at the RM Sotheby’s Monterey 2019 auction event, ready for a new owner to make some more memories in it. Cosmetically the car has been cleaned but not restored, the black leather seats heavily cracked and worn with age and use but the clean engine bay hinting at the decade-old mechanical restoration.

We have nothing but respect for this old straight-six warrior, and while we imagine that the no-reserve auction will still reach a price way beyond the likes of us, we hope the new owner continues to treat it as the car gods intended.