COMPILED BY MICHAEL WARE
In an era of scammers, itʼs always refreshing when what appears to be too good to be true turns out to be genuine, as Bicester Heritage-based dealer Pendine recently discovered. Boss James Mitchell takes up the story: “I got a phone call out of the blue from a gentleman who had seen one of my adverts in a magazine. He claimed to have an Aston Martin DB6 that his mother had bought new, replacing an ageing Jaguar XK150 fhc. He warned me that it hadnʼt been started in 20 years and was stored in the corner of a barn. I agreed to go and have a look but didnʼt have high hopes.
“The following week, I turned up at an extraordinary 17th-century threshing barn. There in the corner, under a very thick layer of dust, was the DB6. It didnʼt take me long to realise that it was an exceptionally original car, having seemingly only covered 32,000 miles from new, and in what would have been a special-order colour combination of black paint with Tobacco hide.
“The trim was to die for, and overall its condition was far better than I expected. Looking through the paperwork, only Aston Martin and then specialist Ian Mason had looked after it. Iʼm normally a Jaguar man, but I had a rush of blood to the head and suddenly found that I owned the car.
“A few days later we extracted it from the barn and sent it to Guy Broad, who has a good feel for bringing sleepers such as this carefully back to life. However, as soon as the car arrived in his workshop, a good client of his saw it and, after assuring me that he would preserve rather than fully restore it, bought it before I got a chance to get stuck in!”
“It is unquestionably one of the most original Aston Martins of the era and an extraordinary find,” concludes James. “I hope we all get to see it in the Preservation Class of a top concours event soon.” It just goes to show that they are still out there…
MOG REAPPEARS IN FAMILY WAY
After WW2, long-serving Motor Sport editor Bill Boddy moved from Fleet to Wales, where he planned to start a motor museum with help from fellow journalist Denis Jenkinson. They registered the name ʻThe Mid Wales Motor Museumʼ and collected some vehicles, but the project never took off and some exhibits were still at Llwynbarried Hall when Boddy died. They later formed part of a Peter Card auction in 2013.
One of the cars in the
