Aston Martin DB4 Single Generation

The DB4's shape belongs to Carrozzeria Touring of Milan, credited to stylist Federico Formenti, and it is built using Touring's own patented Superleggera method, a birdcage of small diameter steel tubes clad in hand formed aluminium panels, licensed to Aston Martin for a royalty on every car. That construction is why DB4s, DB5s and most DB6s carry a pair of Superleggera badges on the bonnet. The proportions, a long bonnet, short tail, and a fastback roofline with almost no ornament, read as continental in a way no previous Aston did, and the design changed constantly across five series without ever losing that shape: an eggcrate grille through Series III gave way to a horizontal bar grille on Series IV and V, door glass gained frames after the first fifty or so cars whistled at speed, and the earliest cars' distinctive rear hinged, front opening bonnet was dropped for safety after Series I. The DB4 GT's enclosed headlamps and steeply raked nose, developed for stability at speed, migrated onto the Series V saloon and then defined the DB5 outright. Zagato's version stripped the GT further still, a plain oval grille and a smoothed tail with no fins, the leanest reading of the same basic shape.

The DB4 GT existed because Aston Martin's racing manager John Wyer wanted a customer car that could beat Ferrari's 250 GT in production based GT racing, and it did. Stirling Moss won its debut outing outright at the Daily Express meeting at Silverstone in April 1959, driving a prototype GT and setting a new class lap record before the car had even reached production. The Zagato bodied GT that followed took the fight further: Jim Clark, already a rising Formula One talent, drove the ex works car 2 VEV for the Essex Racing Stable in the RAC Tourist Trophy at Goodwood in 1961 and 1962, running against Ferrari 250 GT SWBs and GTOs and finishing fourth in 1961 behind teammate Roy Salvadori's sister car 1 VEV. Clark crashed 2 VEV at Goodwood in 1962, tangling with John Surtees's leading Ferrari 250 GTO at Madgwick Corner; the car survived to be restored and later offered at auction with an estimate above ten million pounds. None of this touched Le Mans, where Aston's works effort had by then moved on to the DBR1, but in production based GT racing across Britain and Europe the DB4 GT and GT Zagato were the closest thing Ferrari had to a genuine rival.

The DB4 got there before the Bond association that would define its successor: when it appeared at the 1958 Paris Motor Show, the press response was closer to disbelief that a small British manufacturer could build something this continental, this fast, and this expensive, and sell it. It found its own screen fame a decade later in The Italian Job (1969): Charlie Croker's silver DB4 convertible is destroyed early in the film when the mob pushes it off a cliff road as a warning, in a shot period audiences took at face value. The car that actually goes over the edge on camera is a Lancia Flavia convertible dressed to match; the real DB4 used for the driving scenes, chassis DB4C/1073, survived the production and still exists. The one off Bertone bodied GT, styled by the 22 year old Giorgetto Giugiaro and shown at Geneva in 1961, briefly made the DB4 the subject of design world attention it rarely got again, upstaged at that same show by the debut of Jaguar's E-Type. And the GT Zagato's competition record against works and privateer Ferraris through the early 1960s gave the model a paddock reputation the later, more famous DB5 never had to earn on its own.

Rank them by what made them different, not just by price. The DB4 GT Zagato is the grail: 19 cars, aluminium bodywork by Zagato of Milan, a plain oval grille and no rear fins, built to lighten and sharpen the already quick GT for customer racing against Ferrari's 250 GT. Below it, the standard DB4 GT: enclosed headlamps, a shorter wheelbase, twin plug ignition and triple Weber carburettors for 302bhp, 75 built, most without rear seats. One GT chassis went to Bertone instead of Touring or Zagato, styled by a 22 year old Giorgetto Giugiaro and sold for over three million pounds in 2013. Among ordinary DB4s, the Vantage engine option, triple SU carburettors and 266bhp, is the one to find, offered on both the saloon and the 70 off drophead convertible from Series IV onward. Series matters too: Series I cars, the first 149 built, have frameless door glass and a rear hinged bonnet found nowhere else in the run, while Series V brought a taller, roomier body and the aerodynamic nose later used on the DB5. None of this is a lesser car by comparison, only a more expensive one.

The honest reputation problem is heat, not decay: the twin cam six ran too hot from the factory, and Aston never fully cured it until an enlarged sump and an oil cooler arrived deep into the production run, so watch for a retrofit on early cars and treat overheating on a test drive as a real warning, not a hot day fluke. Underneath the paint, corrosion is the bigger and more expensive story. The Superleggera body hides its steel tube frame under aluminium panels, and rust starts on the inside of those tubes and in the sills, arches and boot floor long before it reaches the surface; by the time it is visible, the repair is structural. The four speed manual is a mechanical, honest gearbox that wants to be driven warm, and a loose lever or a jump out of gear on the test drive means real wear in the layshaft bearings or synchros, not a quirk to shrug off. None of this makes the DB4 a difficult car to live with day to day, once it is sorted. It makes it a car where sorted is doing a lot of work, and where the seller's paperwork matters nearly as much as the car in front of you.