1953 Aston Martin DB2 Vantage Drophead Coupe

1953 Aston Martin DB2 Vantage Drophead Coupe
See all the Images for this Car This Car Introduced in 1950, the DB2 Drophead Coupe -- with its fashionable all-aluminum body, highly tuned twin-cam straight six, and peerless reputation among sports car enthusiasts -- was one of the most exclusive sports cars money could buy. All told, just 99 examples were built, of which 76 were specified in left-hand drive for export markets. Of the left-drive chassis, only 19 were equipped with Aston Martin's race-proven 125 bhp Vantage engine. According to factory records, LML/50/373 was completed on April 28, 1953, and delivered to famed Chicago dealer S.H. "Wacky" Arnolt. Finished in the elegant color combination of Glades Super Black with Muirheads Red trim and a beige fabric top, the Vantage Drophead Coupe must have been quite a car in its day. On July 10, 1953, the Aston Martin was sold to its first owner, Thomas Powell of Providence, Rhode Island. In August 1954, at just 1,458 miles, Powell brought the car in for service to have an oil seal leak rectified and the brakes relined. He also took the opportunity to install twin wing mirrors and Alfin drums up front, as they were already on the rear. Powell returned the DB2 to Wacky Arnolt in late 1954, and the Vantage Drophead Coupe was sold to Bill Bedford through his friend Preston Gray. Both Mr. Gray and Mr. Bedford were New England sportsmen, automobile enthusiasts, and sometime business partners. Mr. Bedford was an early SCCA member and served as the Activities Chairman for the club's Northeast region. Mr. Gray was perhaps the better known of the two, as he successfully raced Allards, Healeys, and a yellow Ferrari 340 Mexico that Mr. Bedford had paid for. Two black-and-white photos, taken in 1954 or 1955 at Mr. Bedford's home in Scituate, Massachusetts, show that the DB2 kept company with an Allard, a Porsche 356, an Austin-Healey, and an MG TD. Mr. Bedford also owned a custom Cadillac-powered Jeep, which he used during monthlong trips through Baja, Mexico. When Aston Martin began offering a 2.9-litre engine in 1955, Mr. Gray obtained a new engine (VB6J/923) and gearbox through Arnolt, and installed them in Mr. Bedford's DB2. At this point, Mr. Bedford had the original engine completely disassembled and stored in various boxes. He also repainted the car bright blue, though not in the wide doorsills or inside the engine compartment. During his ownership, Mr. Bedford would regularly drive his DB2 -- always with the top down -- from Cape Cod to the Maine Turnpike. He particularly enjoyed that the tollbooths along the turnpike recorded the time of passing at each stop -- an effective way of monitoring his average speed. On one occasion, a surprised tollbooth operator exclaimed that his time was "off the charts." Mr. Bedford, who coolly explained that he was racing the car that weekend and testing it out for practice, was let go. In 1957, Mr. Bedford moved to Colorado and gave the DB2 to his friend Bob Hodgson -- chairman of Thompson Raceway and an engineer at Anaconda American Brass. At some point, Mr. Bedford and Mr. Hodgson owned Rolls-Royce Phantoms and they would frequently race each other through Boston early in the morning. The police would just wave them through. Mr. Hodgson drove the DB2 regularly and kept it running with his own clever fixes. When the engine threw a rod through both sides of the block, he repaired it with fiberglass patches. Not only did this hold up quite well, Mr. Hodgson liked to hold a light next to the fiberglass to show off the internals of the running engine. Later on, he added reinforcing clamps to the front coil fittings, a small 90 cast iron plumbing cap near the front axle and, in the early 1960s, he replaced the original rear window with "groovy" red plastic. The DB2 was last registered in Connecticut in 1964, and it spent the next decade parked in a barn on Hodgson's property. In 1975, a young New England car enthusiast named Paul Carima learned of Mr. Hodgson's DB2 and went to see it. When he arrived, the Aston Martin was sitting in the barn with an elaborate metal grid and studio microphone suspended above it. This apparatus was connected to a sound system in Mr. Hodgson's kitchen, so that he could hear if something was around the car. Mr. Carima was in the kitchen discussing the car when there was a noise; Mr. Hodgson turned to his wife and said, "The dog is in the barn again." After negotiating a purchase, Mr. Carima brought the Aston Martin home to Boston. He removed the 2.9-litre engine and gearbox, and put it on a stand with the intention of reassembling the original 2.6-litre engine; however, many other cars came along and the project was put on hold.
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Robert Myrick Photography