r/sportsandclassiccars

John's car was no ordinary DB5, mind you (as if there is such a thing), but was, rather, the Vantage-engined model complete with Weber carburetors, wire wheels, Sundym electrically operated windows, and, according to the advertisement found in the back of Motorsport magazine, “many bills.”

This proved to be the siren call for John, and he made the long trek via train from his home in North Wales to London to have a look, whereupon he was summarily impressed: He acquired the car for £900. It may sound like a pittance today but rolling back the clock can be a bit more sobering: That would be more than £15,000 in today's coin of the realm.

Okay, yes, that's still a pittance.

John was rightly chuffed to use the DB5 as his daily driver for many years, only mothballing the car on his driveway when a lucrative assignment in the Middle East came calling in 1977. And therein the seeds of rot began to take hold.

"Life happened," as John summarized, circumstances which are familiar to all. "I’d had offers to buy her, and there were times when I could have done with the money, but I resisted and, as Sue [John’s wife] said, ‘you’ll never get another one’.”

An "attractive nuisance," as the legal beagles are wont to say, Sue chimed in, noting that “...the neighbors’ kids used to come round to play, and they’d play on her. Bouncing on the bonnet. One balanced on the exhaust pipe and snapped it off!”

With decades of seeing it shoved to a corner or underfoot or simply laying about, John came to a conclusion: Following a long career as a successful welder and "garage man," he was ashamed that he had let his prized possession deteriorate. He had, he said, worked hard to buy her. It was now time to work hard to get her repaired.

To that end, Williams saved up around £400,000 ($530,000) to have the DB5 rebuilt by the Aston Martin Works in Newport Pagnell, the heritage home of the marque where more than 13,000 of the most iconic Aston Martins were built over the firm's storied fifty year history there, and where three years and 2500 hours of labor went into the restoration of John's car.

Work began in earnest in late 2022, with all being completed in late 2025.

Restoration is not for the faint of heart, as seeing one's beloved in such a state can be shocking. It is fair to say that Sue was taken aback during a 2023 visit to the Works' Panel Shop, where the chassis and its underlying Superleggera frame were being restored, and where each aluminum panel was being hand-formed.

"Wow!" she exclaimed, "she looks amazing, doesn't she? You've done such a lot of work."

John was a bit flummoxed too, noting that the once-derelict lump was shaping up well. "It looks like an Aston Martin now. I'm thrilled. It's great to see all the old ways of building a car have been passed on, and younger people here are keeping up the tradition."

Universally acknowledged as the most sought-after specification of all DB5s, the Williams car is a right-hand-drive 1965 DB5 saloon with the sought-after Vantage engine. It was initially specified in what remains, today, the most desirable exterior color – Silver Birch – and boasts a fascinating provenance that includes an original owner from the St George’s Hill area of Surrey, a gated community that, at the time, was home to many celebrities including The Beatles’ John Lennon and Ringo Starr.

Of the 1,022 DB5 models built by Aston Martin between 1963 and 1965, fewer than 1,000 (887) were built in the saloon body style and, of those, only 39 originally boasted the Silver Birch paintwork, higher output Vantage engine, and right-hand drive configuration of the Williams car, making this a particularly rare and desirable example of "the most famous car in the world".

It is, then, a right and proper time capsule of Sixties motoring, now in better-than-new condition.