The 1995 Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of the Aston Martin Owners' Club and this is one of the cars that featured in a display in the paddock.
It's one of the oldest Aston Martins in existence, and is one of two cars that Count Louis Zborowski had built with the intention of competing in the 1922 Tourist Trophy race on the Isle of Man in June of that year, but as they were not completed in time their first race was one month later in the French Grand Prix in Strasbourg. The cars were driven by Count Zborowski and Clive Gallop, but both retired by the half-way point of the 60 lap race which was won by Felice Nazzaro in a Fiat 804. The cars originally had a 4-cylinder inline twin camshaft 16 valve 1,486cc engine, but the record says that the engine in each of these cars was later replaced by 'a Benson twin cam engine designed by the Hon. John Benson', though the capacity of that engine does not seem to have been specified. The founders of the Aston Martin company, Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford, had gone bankrupt in 1924 and the company was bought by Dorothea, Lady Charnwood who put her son John Benson on the board. The DVLA doesn't have a record of PE 2516, but says that the engine capacity of its sister car, XL 3125, is 1,465cc, so that is perhaps still the Benson-designed engine.
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