Aston Martin's failed GT comeback – despite its beautiful cars

Schlesser tried again with 215 at Reims, but the transaxle meant he kept missing gears and eventually bent the valves. Things looked briefly better when Innes Ireland put a 214 on pole for the Tourist Trophy at Goodwood but, as he put it: “I thought I had the race in the bag, but the bloody scrutineers made us run on narrow rims which destroyed the Aston’s handling.” The pictures of Innes in various comically lurid drifts and slides suggest he might be right. At least the 215 finished this race, coming seventh after one too many spins.

And then came Monza, or more precisely the Coppa Inter-Europa three-hour race before the Italian Grand Prix. Both 214s lined up against no fewer than eight 250GTOs and a brace of E-types. Wyer was leaving Aston Martin at the end of the season and it was the last chance for the Project cars to do what they’d promised and beat the Ferraris. And, at last, one of them did.

Bianchi came home an almost unnoticed third because of the battle at the front between Mike Parkes’ GTO and the lead 214, driven by Roy Salvadori, whose wonderfully varied career is celebrated at this year’s Goodwood Revival. Despite racing Ferraris, Lolas, Coopers, Astons and Connaughts at grand prix level and winning Le Mans in 1959, this is the race he claims as his greatest. For the entire second half after the mid-point pitstops, Parkes, a Monza specialist, and Salvadori were locked in such a titanic struggle that, according to Roy: “For lap after lap just tenths of a second separated us and the excited Italian crowd must have thought we were taking it in turns to lead past the pits.” Salvadori also had the crowd on his side, it having been erroneously announced that he was Italian.

The Ferrari had better acceleration, the Aston a higher top speed, so Parkes would overtake out of the slower corners, only for Salvadori to come past on the straights. It took a back-marker to break Parkes’ tow and resolve the race in Aston’s favour. But that was it. Wyer left and the cars were sold. The project was over.

Test-driving an Aston Martin Project 214

Forty-something years later, I’m being strapped into a Project 214 in the Goodwood pit lane. Yet it is neither of the cars that raced in period but, instead, a painstaking recreation of the original that allows its owner Wolfgang Friedrichs to race it hard without fear of damaging irreplaceable history. He does this so that Project 212, which he also owns, is preserved for really important events such as the Goodwood TT and Le Mans.

Unlike some cars that come to Motor Sport for track testing, this 214 is not a museum piece, but a hard-edged, highly developed racer that’s been on the podium for the last three Spa 6-Hours races, winning outright in 2005. It’s perhaps a little quicker than the original but only because modern technology has liberated more reliable power from its twin-cam, straight-six motor – about 380bhp, according to Friedrichs. But while the cockpit of, say, a racing DB4GT Zagato is clearly related to that of the road car, the environment of the 214 is purely for competition purposes.

The engine fires at once with that familiar Aston bark and, at noise-restricted Goodwood at least, it’s quieter than you’d think. You’d expect an achingly heavy clutch, but the throttle is hefty, too. What’s more, the steering wheel is some distance away, forcing me to drive with my arms near straight. I suspect this test is going to become quite physical.

After one lap to learn how it all works, I squirt it out of the chicane in third and am at once impressed not just by the sheer power, but its accessibility. There appears to be fat wads of torque everywhere and while the engine is apparently entirely safe to 7000rpm, there seems no point at all straying beyond 6000rpm. With an all-up weight of about a tonne, acceleration is of the relentless variety. It pulls 6000rpm in top down the back straight at Goodwood with space to spare on gearing tailored to give a top speed in excess of 160mph. Predictably, the noise is magnificent.

Given the age of its design and the location of its engine, you’d not expect it to sniff out apexes like a bloodhound chasing a scent, but it flicks into corners like something altogether lighter and younger. It’s not dainty but as David Clark, who shares the car with Friedrichs, says: “It’s a car without any vices. You can just get in and go hard.”

He’s right. You have to be smooth with it, particularly when braking in something other than a straight line, and become acclimatised to the heavy controls, but once you do you can break the back loose with confidence and drive it on the throttle as its maker intended. The stiff throttle makes heel and toe downchanges – which are essential to avoid locking the back axle – more difficult than they should be but otherwise it feels sufficiently reassuring to encourage a modest level of commitment through the corners, even after only six or seven laps of Goodwood.

Whether the original 214s were like that or whether Colin Blower Motorsport has further refined the handling characteristics is another matter. Michael Salmon has probably spent more time racing Project Aston Martins than anyone else alive and ran both 214s in 1964 after they’d been sold by the works, before becoming a serial winner of historic races in Project 212 in the ’70s. “I always reckoned the 214s were slightly quicker than 212, but trickier to drive, particularly when it was wet when the de Dion axle gave 212 a distinct advantage,” he says.

In a 214 at the International Trophy at a soaking Silverstone in 1964, Salmon broke the GT lap record in practice in one of the 214s, headed the field through Copse, lost it at vast speed at Maggots and “led the field, travelling backwards, all the way to Becketts”. He rejoined in 27th yet finished second, only six seconds shy of Graham Hill’s 1964-spec Maranello GTO.

Tragedy then struck when Salmon and Brian Hetreed took the 214s to the Nürburgring for the 1000Km race at the end of May. There was a thunderstorm in practice, Hetreed lost control and, as was too frequently the case at that track, it cost him his life.

That accident halved the 214 population. While it has been suggested elsewhere that parts of the car were salvaged and even that the wreck was rebuilt, Salmon’s is just one of several authoritative voices that maintains the car was destroyed, and he should know. Certainly Clark and Friedrichs are particular about making no claim to the historical identity of that 214.

The surviving 214, the Coppa Inter-Europa winner, now resides in Simon Draper’s collection, while 215 is in the hands of Genesis manager and historic racing stalwart Tony Smith. As mentioned previously, 212 is in Friedrichs’ care and still raced to this day.

It’s very easy to knock the Aston Project cars. Call it another example of the too-little-too-late approach peculiar to a surprising number of Aston-badged endeavours over the years and you could be thought more cruel than unfair. Yes, had the 214s’ pistons been forged rather than cast, they might have won Le Mans or at least their class. But they weren’t and they didn’t. In racing you cannot live in the what-if world.

Even so, I think we can now afford to think more kindly of these cars that have been adding a dash of colour, a sense of occasion and no small measure of speed and beauty to grids for more than 40 years. Fact is, on the only occasion when one did not succumb to mechanical malady or sheer bad luck, it beat the finest GT car of its era on its own turf. It was not just John Wyer’s last race at Aston Martin but would prove to be the last by a true works Aston for more than 25 years. It must have meant a lot, not least that the Project cars could go out as they had come in: leading from the front.