Recording-Breaking Aston Martin breaks auction record

Published Date: 17th Dec 2015

• This Ultra-rare Aston Martin beat the record of the £8.8m McLaren F1 sold earlier this year
• This rare classic Aston Martin has now taken the record for the most expensive British car ever sold at auction, at £9.45 million
• The car in question is a DB4/GT Zagato, built in 1962 at a cost of £5,470, it was sold by RM Sotheby’s in New York recently.

British made classic Car

This bookmarks a great feat in British motoring history and shows the desirability of British made classics while setting a new record for a British car at auction (although it did fall shy of the £10 million estimate), this great record was previously held by the McLaren F1 that went for £8.8 million at the turn of the year.

This British made DB4/GT was originally built to allow Aston Martin to match Ferrari in the World Sports Car Championship, so Aston Martin sent its car to Carrozzeria Zagato, and told him to turn it into a rocket ship, and that’s just what he did.

 

Zagato gave the car a new smoother body design, made it 50kg lighter and added 12bhp to its 3.7-litre engine, giving it a total power output of 314bhp.

The car had a four-speed manual gearbox, 240lb ft of torque, and weighed in at 1,225kg. Zagato’s Aston Martin brain child could hit 0-60mph in just 6.1 seconds, and had a top speed of 153mph – These were mouth-watering numbers at the time.

The Aston Martin that was sold was 1 of only 19 DB4/GTs ever created, and it was delivered to Australia in the early 60’s, it took part in many motorsport races there. Laurie O’Neill was Its first owner, he resided in New South Wales, where he had a respectable collection of Ferrari and Porsche racing cars, and even an F1 car or two.

It’s time Racing in Australia came to an end after just a few years, and was then sold to Colin Hyams, and he displayed the car at the 1965 Melbourne motor show, Colin then sold the car to Alex Copland, Alex kept the car hidden away in storage for 20 years.

It wasn’t until the early 90’s that the car arrived in the UK and was restored with great care, since then the Aston Martin has been on display most of world’s biggest classic car events, winning quite a few trophies along the way. It won Best in Class finish at Pebble Beach in 2007 and took the overall crown at the Louis Vuitton Event in 2002.

 

It remains some way away from the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO that became the most expensive car ever sold at auction, at £22.8 million just last year.