Aston Martin – DB5 (1966)

In 1965, erstwhile owner of Aston Martin Sir David Brown aspired to transport his hunting gear along with his dog in an Aston Martin. It goes without saying that he needed rather more space than the regular saloon could offer. The result was the DB5 shooting brake, created at Brown’s personal request. It just so happened that a number of customers also wanted to buy a DB5 shooting brake. But this was not a good fit with the production process in Newport Pagnell. An arrangement was therefore arrived at between Aston Martin and Harold Radford Coachbuilders Ltd., and the shooting brake version was built in a small series to meet the demand. Radford was chosen because the bodywork specialist was already experienced in building the similar Bentley Countryman shooting brake. Conversion into an estate version was no easy matter since the transformation impacted massively on the body structure from windscreen to tail. The patented Superleggera tubular structure of the roof was cut away and a new extended steel roof was built to reduce the inherent rigidity of the original Superleggera system. However, the specification for the mechanicals remained the same as for the standard DB5 and offered identical performance statistics. Each shooting brake started life as a finished saloon costing £4,400. A markup of £2,000 was added to the price tag for the shooting-brake version. Just twelve DB5 shooting brakes were fabricated, with only four rolling out of the factory gates as left-hand drives. It made them the rarest DB5 version of all times. This DB5 was delivered new to the USA and remained across the pond until 1988. The elite workhorse was then sold to Switzerland and subsequently underwent a complete Aston Martin Works Service restoration in Newport Pagnell between 1992 and 1994.