00:00It is a very, very beautiful Aston Martin.
00:04Probably one of the best DB Mark III's in the world.
00:16My name's Nigel Woodward, I'm Managing Director here at Classic Motorcars and I'm sitting
00:20in front of this Aston Martin DB Mark III.
00:23This car is a fantastic car.
00:26It was bought at auction in 2015 for way over its estimate at the time, which was £30,000
00:31to £40,000 and actually it sold for a little over £100,000.
00:35The car was in barn find condition.
00:37It was clearly in need of a total restoration.
00:39That comes as no surprise to us.
00:41We've restored a lot of cars over the years, 4,500 hours of work have gone into it.
00:47We have a very fixed process for restoring cars.
00:50There's the sort of historical research part right at the beginning of the process.
00:53Then we strip the car down to its component form, every last nut, bolt and washer.
00:57The body and the chassis are separated.
01:00They're cleansed of old paintwork and corrosion and we work out how we would best go ahead
01:04with the restoration.
01:07It was in such poor condition that we've had to effectively make a new body for the car.
01:13The body was the hardest part of the car to restore because of the nature of the clamshell
01:18bonnet.
01:19They're a coach-built car, handmade from aluminium, and we've had to replicate much
01:23of that original coach work.
01:24It's the last of an era.
01:26It's the last of a coach-built, separate chassis Aston Martin.
01:31Aston Martin built 551 of these cars in the late 1950s.
01:35It has a W.O. Bentley designed engine.
01:37It's a wonderful thing to drive.
01:38Here we are in the cockpit.
01:40It feels like I'm sitting back in the late 1950s.
01:43The car's equipped with an umbrella handbrake, as they're known, so a bit of a throwback
01:47there to the pre-war years.
01:49We've included a radio in the restoration.
01:51The car was actually supplied with a HMV radio when it was new, which would have been quite
01:55an unusual, luxurious addition to the car in its day.
01:58This is a slightly later radio that we've put some modern internals into.
02:02Let's have a look under the bonnet of this Aston Martin at the heart of the car.
02:06To get there, we need to open this rather substantial bonnet catch.
02:11This has had a complete engine rebuild, smooth running, sweet idle, gives good performance.
02:17It had a cast iron cylinder head originally.
02:20They were prone to cracking.
02:21This car's got a replacement.
02:24There's a number of things which are really satisfying points in the restoration of the
02:27car.
02:28I think the first time the engine starts.
02:36We do about 400, 500 miles of testing in a car that we fully restore.
02:40Definitely one of the perks of the job, having the privilege of driving these lovely cars.
02:46Here's a nice tight roundabout.
02:49Power out of there.
02:51Oh, what a lovely thing.
02:55I think we can call the engine response must speak.
03:04Falls away lovely.
03:05Its value today, I would put it something in excess of 400,000 pounds.
03:09It absolutely feels like a 400,000 pounds car.
03:12This car is recently completed.
03:14I'm looking forward to handing it over to the customer.
03:16He's going to end up with, well, a very, very beautiful Aston Martin and probably one
03:21of the best DV Mark 3s in the world.
03:23I'm going to look through for it,
03:25why quite a few years when внутри the garage is over there.
03:31Four or two times during the next 20 years, I'm going to introduce a week.
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