1959 Aston Martin DBR4

I took this photograph at the Donington Park Museum in October 1989.

It's a 1959 Aston Martin DBR4, originally called the DBR4-250, which has a 6-cylinder inline 2,493cc engine. The book ‘Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection’ has this note about the car.

In 1958 the rear-engined, or more accurately ‘mid-engined’, Cooper-Climaxes had proved themselves capable of winning Grand Prix races. They were smaller, lighter and more nimble than the classic front-engined cars, and several designs were overtaken by this fundamental revolution in thinking. Aston Martin had built a single-seater version of their successful DB3S sports car as early as 1955, racing it New Zealand, and from this project grew Formula 1 ambitions. But development was slow with most of the racing department’s time taken up by sports car programmes. A car was designed contemporary with the later Maserati 250F’s and the Vanwalls, but when it appeared in 1959 it was too late. On its debut at Silverstone in the 1959 non-Championship meeting, Roy Salvadori put the 280bhp six-cylinder, De Dion rear axled car on pole position and finished second, and that was to prove its best performance. Failure with the Formula 1 car took some of the prestige away from Aston’s World Sports Car Championship victory that year, and although lighter cars were built for 1960 they were totally out-moded and were withdrawn before the season’s end. The Collection’s car is believed to be the first 1959 chassis, but it was acquired in disassembled and drearful condition, and has been totally restored in the Collection’s Leicester workshops.