FITTED OUT FOR A KING

Ordered new by a Belgian monarch, this sole surviving Vignale-bodied Aston Martin DB2/4 is back on form after decades in the doldrums

- MARTIN BUCKLEY

The all too-common plight of the show car and the one-off special is perfectly encapsulated in the rather sad story of chassis number LML/802, a Vignale-bodied Aston Martin DB2/4. Custom-built at the behest of 25-year-old King Baudouin of Belgium in the mid-1950s – doubtless at huge expense – it was reduced to the level of a discarded trinket by the beginning of the 1960s. Once the height of Turin chic, LML/802 was already, even then, the product of another era: a rapidly ageing, buxom show queen – too much jewellery, too much make-up – in an age of clean, flat-chested ’60s purity.

As the smooth, simple, rounded Italian shapes of the early ’50s evolved to reflect the public fascination with all things American and ‘jet age’, this Vignale-bodied Aston demonstrates the hall of mirrors that car styling had become. It was just a phase, of course, but one embraced by Alfredo Vignale (and his in-house stylist, Giovanni Michelotti) with more relish than most, which was perhaps one of the reasons why Vignale lost the patronage of Ferrari – in favour of Pinin Farina – in the second half of the ’50s.