Aston Martin restores DB5 bought for £900
Acquired by its current owner as teenager, the car hadn't moved for decades - now it's worth a million quid
We all have our dream cars as teenagers, the stuff that you might just have been able to get behind the wheel of if you'd scrimped and saved. For Welshman John Williams, who was 18 in 1972, there was only one car for him: the Aston Martin DB5. Gotta love teenage ambition. But there’s also no arguing with adolescent stubbornness and determination, either. So John saved up, took all the welding overtime he could, didn’t go to the pub, cut out the lattes and avocado on toast, and by September of 1973 he had £900 to his name. Which, yes, bought a Aston Martin DB5 a little over half a century ago.
Even adjusting that figure for inflation doesn’t make the situation seem much less extraordinary, Aston stating that £900 back then is the equivalent of £15,000 today. Indeed the bigger surprise is surely that a teenager saved that up in less than two years. Anyway, the DB5 in question was in London, John was in North Wales, and beyond a phone call there wasn’t any way of knowing more about the Aston without seeing it. So our intrepid welder took the train to London, paid his £900, and became an Aston Martin owner at 19. Maybe the '70s weren’t so bad after all.
It was the dream DB5 spec, too: a right-hand drive Silver Birch saloon with the Weber-carbed Vantage engine, of which just 39 were ever made. Understandably then, John made good use of his purchase, using it pretty much every day for four years until getting a job in the Middle East in 1977. And that’s when it was left on the driveway…
John’s wife, Sue, said: “The neighbours’ 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!” Yikes. John had offers to buy the DB5 over the years, but resisted on the sage advice of his better half, who had told him, “you’ll never get another one”. Wise words indeed. John added: “As time went on it became a goal of mine to get her restored; to be able to drive her again. Being a garage man, I was a bit ashamed that I’d let her get into that state. I worked hard to buy her, and we’ve worked hard to get her repaired.” See the pictures for proof - it really was in desperate need of some TLC.
Which is where Aston Martin Works comes in; after all, where better than Newport Pagnell to complete a bare metal restoration of a DB5? The Williams’ car has been there since the end of 2022, and after 2,500 hours of work is now finished to a spectacular standard. Chassis, frame, hand-formed aluminum panels, paint, trim, powertrain… everything was overhauled to deliver an essentially as-new DB5. Probably better than new, in fact, given the expertise now on hand. From that original condition to now, it’s hard to believe that this is the same vehicle; there’s still nothing quite like a DB5 to make people swoon. Or spend - apparently the car is now valued at £1m.
John added of his Aston: “Well, it's been a long time coming, a long time saving, but it's been worth every penny. It's just amazing. It's probably almost 50 years since I have driven this car, but the experience is phenomenal. It's just... unbelievable. My girl’s back and up and running! Back to her former glory.” Here’s to many more years happy motoring in the DB5. And probably one or two better offers should someone else want to buy it…
Do we know how much the restoration cost?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93w8xxj09jo
Million pound valuation seems optimistic when they seem to sell for half that at auction, but that wouldn't be as good a headline.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93w8xxj09jo
Million pound valuation seems optimistic when they seem to sell for half that at auction, but that wouldn't be as good a headline.
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