THE WONDERFUL TROUBLED WORLD OF
REPLICAS Vs CONTINUATIONS Words and photos John Dennehy
Thinking of building a replica? John Dennehy has a word of caution…
If you ever find yourself in the south of England wandering around the back streets of terraced homes in suburban Surrey, you’d be hard pressed to notice a small alleyway halfway down one such street. This is the home of Richard Stuart Williams Ltd, better known simply as RSW, a moniker bandied about by those fortunate enough to have had their classic breathed on by Richard and his team over more than five decades, and where the TV cameras headed to, to make the documentary “Stars and their Cars” in the 1990s. It’s also where, in 1991 and 1992, the world of continuation cars kicked off when RSW, in collaboration with Aston Martin Lagonda (AML), oversaw the build of six so called Sanction 2 DB4 Zagatos, of which only 19 had been built in period and saw success on the track in the 1960s, taking on Ferrari and Jaguar in epic sports car battles worldwide. For some, the DB4 Zagato was even more beautiful to the eye than the Ferrari 250GTO, although I concede it’s a close run thing. Importantly, AML agreed to pass on six AML period chassis numbers to RSW for the builds.
16 Beaded Wheels
To give some idea of the financial imperative driving these prime marque continuation builds, an original DB4 GT Zagato can command up to $40m, and a Sanction 2 RSW, more than $10m. Phew! Jump forward to 2019 and now AML itself is in the game, producing a further limited run of ‘tool-room’ copies of the car and to no great surprise, significantly beefed up with over a 100hp more on tap than the original. But you couldn’t just rock up and buy one, even if you had the $8m+ (yes, really) sitting around doing nothing else as you would already own a ‘significant’ modern Aston, and, wait for it, also order one of the ‘new’ continuation DB4 GTs, the whole package setting back the lucky few about $12m. Gulp. AML will tell you these are ‘continuations’ but they are in effect, replicas, as unlike the Sanction 2 Zagatos, they don’t have period validated chassis and as a result these new AML factory cars aren’t road legal in the UK. Undeterred and given the queue of buyers, AML has also now built 25 Goldfinger DB5s, with all the clever gubbins (the ejector seat, doesn’t, for obvious reasons — they’re no
