One hell of a company car: Driving David Brown's Aston Martin DB2

By 1949 the Aston Martins looked vastly different from the previous year’s tourer-bodied racer. The DB2 featured a saloon body with a chassis slightly shorter than the DB1, its 2-litre engine wrapped in a more curvaceous body than the Spa ‘winner’. The matt green cars, understood to be prototypes for a 1950 production model, didn’t have a particularly satisfying debut at Le Mans, with two DNFs and a seventh-place finish. Only two cars were sent to the Belgian 24 Hours Touring Car Grand Prix – one running with Lagonda power, the other with an Aston four-cylinder – but here the DB2s fared better. The Lagonda-powered car driven by Johnson/Charles Brackenbury covered the third-highest distance, while the Aston-powered car, driven by Horsfall, finished fourth.

As planned the DB2 went into production, but designer Frank Feeley had only a few months to ready the first cars. So little time in fact that the car was built from full-scale drawings rather than small-scale models. VMF 64 (LML/50/8) was the second car off the production line – Aston had decided to take the first three cars to Le Mans in June. All three had 2580cc production engines with slightly larger-bore SUs and larger fuel tanks (32 gallons), producing 125bhp as opposed to 105bhp in the road cars. Tragedy struck when Jack Fairman crashed LML/50/9 en route to Le Mans, badly injuring his wife. The fact that he turned up at the circuit still wanting a drive only maddened the easily ruffled Wyer. Thompson, however, has fond memories of the boss: “He was exacting and had a wonderful dry sense of humour. He was meticulous in everything he did. A great man to race under.” Fairman didn’t drive for Aston again until 1959.

Thompson, the other driver for LML/50/9, was placed in the 1949 six-cylinder car alongside John Gordon, but on the eighth lap the crankshaft broke and Thompson never got to race. This was also the year that Brown himself tried to race one of his cars. “He had ambitions to drive in 1950, but the RAC turned him down,” recalls Thompson.

VMF 64 (or ‘64’ as Thompson calls it) rescued what had been looking like a dismal outing for the works team. The car, driven by George Abecassis (who would marry Brown’s daughter Angela in 1956) and Lance Macklin, was delayed briefly on the Sunday morning due to a sticking throttle but went on to finish fifth overall, first in the 3000cc class and, most surprisingly, tied in the Index of Performance with a Monopole Panhard. The last car (LML/50/7) came home a respectable sixth.

When Macklin was injured, Wyer brought in Grand Prix star Raymond Sommer to drive ‘64’ in the Silverstone Production Sports Car race that August. Never one to go anything but flat out, the two-time Le Mans winner politely told Wyer – now employed full-time by Aston – that there was no point giving him signals to either speed up or slow down as he could not do the former and would not do the latter. The Frenchman duly finished second in class.

From there the car went to Northern Ireland for the RAC Tourist Trophy at the 7.14-mile Dundrod circuit. The recovered Macklin drove it to third in class behind the other two Aston works cars. To round off its first season, Charles Brackenbury took ‘64’ up Shelsley Walsh in 50.46 seconds and finished sixth in class.

The DB2 might have been gaining results, but Wyer knew that to score an overall victory a proper sports car was needed. Brown engaged the services of Professor Robert Eberan-Eberhorst of Auto Union fame for the job. But if it was a rush to get the DB2 ready for Le Mans in 1950, preparing the DB3 for the ’51 race was a step too far. Wyer fell back on the DB2 and had two special lightweights built with 200kg shaved off, thanks in no small part to getting rid of the standard seats, each weighing 20kg.

Tom Wisdom had taken ‘64’ to 11th overall and first in the over 2-litre Vetture Veloci class (six minutes ahead of Salvatore Amendola’s Ferrari) at the 1951 Mille Miglia before it too was prepared for Le Mans. ‘64’ underwent a similar weight loss process (it had been 1149kg with full tanks after the previous year’s 24 Hours) and was taken as a back-up. As well as reducing the weight, Webers replaced SUs, more power was eked out of the engine and the axle ratio was raised to make the most of the Mulsanne Straight.

“It didn’t have a weak spot at all. John Wyer gave us a rev limit for most of the race – but for the last 12 hours he lifted the limit by 500rpm, which helped us along the way.”

Macklin and Thompson drove ‘64’ this time, maintaining a higher average speed than Rosier’s Talbot which had won Le Mans in 1950, even though on race day the weather was atrocious. The car outraced not only the other lightweight Astons, but also most of the rest of the field.

It finished first in class and, amazingly, third overall. Thompson: “We certainly made up some places thanks to the weather, because it rained through the night. The previous year the other two cars came in fifth and sixth, and Wyer aimed at hitting a bit higher, which we did.

“The car was stationary for 11 minutes in the whole 24 hours – it took longer to change the tyres those days – and we were only 9km or so behind the second-placed car, so the race went remarkably smoothly. I absolutely loved doing it – three-, four-hour stints at a time. There was also a great atmosphere in the team, although one never really saw Macklin because he was usually with a bird…”

From its Le Mans success ‘64’ went on to victory in the Alpine Rally, winning four stages in the hands of Wisdom and his wife Elsie, better known as ‘Bill’ – a nickname she’d earned from her six elder brothers for being a tomboy.

The following year three cars were entered for the Mille Miglia, including ‘64’. Co-driver Anthony Hulme was taken ill and replaced by Fred Lown – one of the mechanics who took the cars out to Brescia – but Wisdom still finished 12th overall and first in class. The last time the car competed was later in 1952 at the Alpine Rally, where it finished 15th overall and fifth in class with Wisdom driving once again.

In September 1955 the Hon Gerald Lascelles – who worked in the Aston Martin purchasing department in the early ’50s and later became president of the BRDC – approached Brown in order to buy the car. Gerald’s son Henry still has Brown’s reply, which includes the following: “Up to now we have felt that we should keep this car as a sort of museum piece.

Therefore, at the present time I see no possibility of our disposing of VMF 64.” However, in July 1957 Aston seemed to change its mind about the importance of heritage and sold it to Lascelles for £500. The car has remained in the family but hasn’t been raced since. “My father had no intention of racing her, as he felt she’d earned an honourable retirement,” says Henry.

Squeezing my 6ft 7ins frame into ‘64’ was a struggle, but the car is extremely accommodating once the wheels are turning. Although the steering is at best vague in a straight line and very heavy when cornering, Thompson doesn’t remember it being much different from other cars of its era: “In those days one was used to heavy steering, it wasn’t anything exceptional. ‘64’ was a wonderful car to drive and really excelled in the long-distance events.”

Although the interior is in road trim, one can see why the car made such a good long-distance racer. “It didn’t have a weak spot at all,” says Thompson. “John Wyer gave us a rev limit for most of the race – but for the last 12 hours he lifted the limit by 500rpm, which helped us along the way.” Now back on more tractable SUs, the engine still pulls well and you can imagine what the exhaust must have sounded like when the car was in race trim, something that Gordon Wilkins described as a “sonorous scream between 4000 and 5000rpm” when he road-tested it straight after Le Mans in ’51.

VMF 64 is one of the most historically important racing Aston Martins. Whether or not you agree that it had “earned an honourable retirement” when Lascelles bought it, there’s no questioning its originality. It’s not often you find a car that has been so unmolested, and rarer still that it should also have such a successful and interesting past. The car will be auctioned at RM’s London sale on October 28 and we wouldn’t be surprised if it sailed past its £300-400,000 estimate.

Back in 1955, when obsolete racing cars were disposed of without a thought, David Brown considered ‘64’ important enough to keep. It was history’s good fortune that when he did decide to release it, this significant car went to a buyer who had the good taste not to ‘improve’ it.

Thanks to RM Auctions and Henry Lascelles for their help with this feature.