Stored for 30 years, barn-find Aston Martin DB4 needs some love
The world still has a few more barn finds left in it, but it’s hard to imagine discovering many matching-numbers Aston Martin DB4s among them.
That’s what you’ll find in the U.S. on eBay however, where a 1962 DB4 that has been in the same ownership for more than 40 years, and in storage for thirty of those, has come up for sale in New York.
How the right-hand-drive car with its GB plate ended up on the other side of the Atlantic isn’t shared in the ad, but the story behind the car’s storage certainly adds to its intriguing appeal.
According to the author, the car’s previous owner had returned from Vietnam in the 1970s and went back to work at his local body shop. After helping to repair his boss’s car, the reward was the DB4. Doesn’t sound like such a bad boss, to us …
After having the 3.7-liter, straight-six Aston towed back home, he intended to restore it but, proving that some stories repeat themselves time and time again, our new Aston owner never found the time. The DB4 languished in his barn for decades.
Recently extracted and brought into the sunlight after spending fully half of its life untouched, the DB4 is certainly rough around the edges—but it is original and, in the photos at least, appears largely complete. Storage has protected it from the harsh, northeastern U.S. winters, but as most evaluations, only seeing it up close and getting the car on a ramp will reveal exactly how extensive any restoration would need to be.
The DB4 is being offered for sale at $325,000. That falls a bit below the model’s #4 condition value of $344,000, the value of a running, driving 1962 DB4 with obvious cosmetic flaws. That asking price might explain why the car’s recent eBay auction seemed to end without a winning bid; at that figure, any buyer would really have to value the its originality and story.
Perhaps, inspired by our recent trip to the Patina show, the real course of action is to ensure it is structurally and mechanically sound (no small task, we suspect) and drive it as-is, with its barn-find heart on its sleeve.
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