Pre-war saloon has spent most of its life in Liverpool – and the last half-century garaged
MONTH IN CARS Barn Finds
Pre-war Astons are rarities in their own right, but this MkII Sports Saloon – which recently emerged from a Merseyside garage after almost 50 years dormant – is one of a handful of survivors fitted with its rakish original two-door saloon coachwork. Only 61 MkIIs were built on this wheelbase and all but 24 were tourers or drophead coupés – and many saloons were lost when tired bodies were junked in favour of touring coachwork.
This car was sold new in Liverpool but moved on soon afterwards; it returned to Merseyside in 1953, bought for £350 by Philip Kenyon, an electrical engineer and wartime member of the Radio Secret Service. The Kenyon family holidayed with the car in the Welsh hills and the Lake District, as shown in family photographs. A broken handbrake cable eventually saw the 30-year-old car deemed unservicable; it was consigned to a garage in the late Sixties and has apparently not been touched since.
It’s clearly too far gone to be a credible candidate for a preservation-class approach, mainly because of the decayed interior, but as a restoration candidate it’s extremely enticing – complete, assembled, un-messed-with, and accompanied by documentation such as a 1967 insurance certificate and a 1965 MoT test certificate. The MkII sports saloon will be offered for sale by H&H at its Duxford sale on 19 June, soon after we go to press, estimated at £45,000 to £55,000.
Beneath the endangered-species coachwork is a 1.5-litre ohc four-cylinder
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