1957 Aston Martin DBR2

The theme of the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in July 1993 was 'British Racing Green' and this was one of the cars on display in the paddock.

It's a 1957 Aston Martin DBR2, one of two cars that were built using chassis from the Lagonda DP166 project and the then new 6-cylinder inline 3,670cc engine, and this is chassis #DBR2/2. The other car, #DBR2/1 competed in the 1957 Le Mans 24 Hour race but retired after eight hours of the race. After taking first and third places in the Daily Express Trophy race at Silverstone DBR2/1 didn't race again that season and DBR2/2 only took part in a series of races in the Bahamas. For 1958 the FIA set the engine capacity for the World Sportscar Championship at 3 litres which made the DBR2 ineligible and Aston Martin concentrated their efforts that season on the smaller-engine DBR1. The DBR2 was given a larger 3,910cc engine and competed in races at British circuits - I remember seeing both cars in the British Empire Trophy race at Oulton Park where Stirling Moss won and Tony Brooks finished second, and in the sports car race at the Aintree 200 meeting where Roy Salvadori finished in second place and Tony Brooks failed to finish. The cars also competed at Goodwood, where Stirling Moss won the Sussex Trophy race, and at Silverstone, where Roy Salvadori and Tony Brooks finished in fourth and fifth places in the Daily Express Trophy race. After being raced in a Sportscar GP race at Spa by Paul Frère and Carroll Shelby (finishing second and third) the cars were given 4,164cc engines and sent to the USA where they competed in a number of races, usually driven by George Constantine and Bob Oker. The cars remained in the USA in 1959, returning to the UK in 1960 to be driven in minor races at Brands Hatch and Silverstone.

As I said at the start of this piece, the DBR2 was part of a display of 'British Racing Green' at this Silverstone meeting (you can see some of the other cars behind it), but whose idea was it to display the car behind a fence like this?

On 12 July 2016 I showed photographs of both the Aston Martin DBR2s that I had taken at the Coys meeting at Silverstone in 1995.