1954 Aston Martin DB2/4 by Vignale

Five or six decades ago, this car would have struggled to find a patron like Fountain. The ’60s was a golden but also less sentimental age when knowledge, reverence and scholarship for old cars was in much shorter supply. The used car trade of the day, if asked to value such a car, would simply have shrugged its shoulders. Rare does not always equal desirable in the realm of classic exotica even now, and there would have been many who preferred the unpretentious simplicity of Frank Feeley’s original to the effete Michelotti flourishes of LML/802, the only surviving Aston