The owners: Paul and Jennifer Martin
DB Air Force One – a De Havilland Dove self-flown by Brown
The Aston DB4 balances comfort with precision
Tadek Marek-designed straight-six is torquey... and a little shouty
‘It’s easy to imagine him stepping from his De Havilland’s cockpit into the cabin of a waiting DB4’ The DB4 not a quiet car, curiously. In fact in the context of the late Fifties it’s strangely hard to place. At £4000 in 1962 it was twice the price of the more overtly luxurious Alvis TD21 with its polished wooden dashboard and whispering engine; but it wasn’t a supercar by the standards of the time either – it was priced in Ferrari and Maserati territory but was markedly slower and heavier than the 150mph Italians. Then again, by this point the DB4 range had spawned the GT and Zagato variants, so perhaps it merely had nothing to prove. That said, although it’s clearly made with the robustness of one of the Victorian factories around here, it’s not a luxury car – it’s relatively noisy, not particularly opulent and quite hard work to drive. Aston purists will hate me for saying this, but the cars it reminds me most of are the BMWs of the late Fifties, all straight-six torque, hefty build quality and a hint of race breeding overridden by a need to traverse the Autobahn at speed. And then, as I pass Meltham golf course, signal right and start to recall Aston’s early history, the reason becomes clear. The road south of the village of Holme has several names. Officially it’s the A6024, but everyone knows it as the Woodhead Pass. Heralded by warning signs directing HGVs away towards the
‘I’d wanted an Aston DB4 ever since they were launched in 1958, but couldn’t afford one,’ says this car’s owner, former Merchant Navy engineer Paul Martin. ‘There was a step-change in the pricing between the DB MkIII and the DB4, from less than £3000 – still expensive – to more than £4000, which was a huge amount of money in the Sixties. But thankfully, they depreciated quite heavily back then. ‘It was 1971. I already owned a vintage Aston MkII – which I’ve still got – and I saw an advert for a secondhand DB MkIII for sale in London for £2000. I drove all the way down there from Hull to have a look, but having test-driven it, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I was disappointed, and set off home back up the M1. But just outside London I passed Motorway Sports Cars, which had this DB4 on its forecourt for the same amount of money. I stopped, took it for a drive, and bought it there and then. ‘I’ve had it 46 years now and drive it in all weathers for all sorts of occasions, from club events to weddings. I’m not your typical Aston owner – well, not nowadays at any rate – in that I do most of the work on it myself. There’s a lot of mystique surrounding how expensive they are to run and I certainly couldn’t meet most specialists’ prices, let alone afford to buy the car now; I can barely believe how valuable they are nowadays. It’s a fundamentally straightforward, solidly-built car with off-the-shelf parts such as a Salisbury differential, so it’s not difficult to work on if you know what you’re doing. ‘Given parts prices, it often makes more sense to repair than replace. For example, I once spent a while straightening the grille out after encountering a suicidal pheasant. It meant a few days in the garage with the grille in bits on the workbench, but given that a new one costs £1000, it was time well spent!’