Michael Satterfield
by Michael Satterfield
This 1957 Aston Martin DB 2/4 Mark II was another when it sold at Bonhams’s Monterey auction last August for $87,750, buyer’s premium included. Built as a left-hand-drive car for export to California, the Aston Martin (chassis number AM3001268, engine number VB6J895), changed hands a couple of times in its first four years. According to Bonhams, its third owner used it as a daily driver – using it even to pick up her kids from school – until the mid-1970s, when she placed it in storage in Malibu, where it remained until last year. From the auction description:
Save one long-ago repaint in a non-original color, it is absolutely factory original and unmolested in every way, having lived its entire life in California. Its left-hand drive chassis appears rock solid, and its aluminum Tickford body panels wear the patina of decades of enjoyment, although the bodylines are straight and panel gaps uniform.
Despite the car’s superficially tatty appearance, the beyond-skin-deep beauty of this example is that it has never been wrecked, disassembled, or improperly restored. Although the air cleaner housings have gone missing, the original jack, engine hand crank, toolbox sans most tools, and glass windscreen washer bottle are present and accounted for.
Source: Bonhams.com
