THE WASHBOARD DB2s REGISTER
i.e. THE EARLIEST DB2s
A very brief history of how the DB2 began...
"It was late in 1946 that I read an
advertisement in The Times, offering a sports car company for sale. I
replied to the advert and, rather
to my surprise, learnt that the company was Aston Martin, which was
quite a name, even in those days. I went to see Gordon Sutherland, who
had this little place in Feltham and a prototype of tubular
construction, the famous Atom. I tried the car and found it had very
good roadhandling but was very much under-powered. Nevertheless, I
thought it would be fun to have and play around with, so I bought Aston
Martin myself - completely outside the David Brown company - for
£20,000. That was a lot of money in those days and for it I
got the prototype, a few rusty old machine tools and the services of
the Atom's designer, Claude Hill who was very good."
Thus it was that David Brown came to own Aston Martin (source RAC1).
Fifteen "2-litre sports models" (later renamed DB1) were built using
the 4
cylinder engine.
As stated a more potent engine than the 2 litre 4 cylinder was needed
and when David Brown saw the 2.3 litre, 6 cylinder, overhead camshaft
design Lagonda engine (of Willie Watson design, working when W.O.
Bentley waas chief engineer) he thought at once this
was the engine to have to power future Aston Martins. As the engine was
ready, having been built, tried and tested he decided to buy the
Lagonda company just for that.
Claude Hill who had designed the very good Aston Martin chassis and,
who had already worked on a 6 cylinder and was rather upset and
left the company.
Frank Feeley designed three cars (not yet called DB2s) for Le Mans and
they were built from
his full size drawings. He later said: "I made no small-scale drawings
at all, there wasn't time". Those three cars were LMA/49/1, LMA/49/2
and LML/49/3 (registered UMC 64, UMC 65 and UMC 66). A road car of
similar design (LML/49/4 registered UMC 272) was built for
David Brown.
The DB2 was later redesigned and a new body appeared with LML/50/5 (VMG
606)...
A DHC also appeared with LML/50/10 (VMF 37).
A second batch of works team cars was composed of LML/50/7, LML/50/8
and LML/50/9 (registered VMF 63, VMF 64 and VMF 65) which gained many
success despite a lack of sheer power. Nevertheless the DB2 had good
brakes and exceptionally good reliability and handling. Pilot George
Abecassis described the DB2 as " just about the best handling
beam-axled sports car built ".
A third batch of competition cars was made with lightened cars,
codename DP47, chassis number LML/50/50 and LML/50/55 (registered XMC
76 and XMC 77). 450 lb were saved, with 32 lb by "simply" drilling the
chassis. Thinner and hence lighter alloy was used for the body, side
and rear windows were made in Plexiglass. The interior was much more
spartan, whereas the VMFs were almost stock.
Engine was now up to 140 bhp with Webers (or 128 bhp with SUs, should
poor petrol would be used).
But those two machines are no more " washboard DB2s " so not in this
part of
the site...
Aston Martin Scrapbook
http://astonuts.free.fr
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