THE DB5 DAILY

Pulled out of a barn after 40 years, this Aston Martin has been kept as a rough diamond so it can be driven without fear

- CHARLIE CALDERWOOD 

Everyone likes the idea of their assets accruing additional value, but, unlike with stocks and shares, a car's usability changes with what it's worth. Today, the idea of leaving an Aston Martin DB5 in a busy city centre in a narrow parking spot, or driving it on wet, muddy, broken roads, would make many cringe with fear. The beauty of Rodney McMahon's Roman Purple 1965 DB5, however, is that it has been rebuilt not to win concours rosettes but to be driven.

"I have a bit of a thing for Aston Martins," says Rodney, in a textbook demonstration of British understatement. The DB5 is the most recent addition to a collection that includes a DB4, DB6, DB7, V8 Volante and Rapide. Of his more classic Astons, the DB4 and DB6 are immaculate, show-condition cars, so when he asked Aston specialist RS Williams to look out for a DB5 on his behalf, he requested one that wasn't quite so perfect. "The restored ones are beautiful, but the problem is that you can only damage them from that point on," says Rodney. "I wanted a car that someone could open a door into in a car park, or I could pick up a stonechip, and it'd just become part of the patina."

Well, how is four decades sitting in a barn for patina? The car RS Williams found was a remarkably original, and unusually coloured, DB5 that hadn't been on the road in 41 years. "Two brothers owned it," continues Rodney. "They stored it pretty well, actually; they hadn't left it to rot, and with some recommissioning I drove it as it was for a year." He doesn't know why the car sat unused for so long, but the Aston was a relatively high-mileage car among a collection of classics, so had likely suffered a minor breakdown that never got fixed.