Gentleman thug

A single, simple cut-and-shut prototype fathered Aston’s most exalted line of high-performance road-racers. James Elliott drives it

- James Elliott

Something is not right. Racing cars are meant to be more difficult to drive than road cars; extra power and performance but less harnessed, so trickier to access and control than with the engineering amelioration for the great unwashed. But that's not the case here, not at all. The German roads we are on, beautifully maintained (of course), are deserted (of course), and undulating between hills and valleys to offer the perfect proving ground for this experimental racer.

And this historically important Aston Martin is taking full advantage, scything through the empty countryside like it's got a bridge to capture. But not at the expense of even one iota of comfort or usability. Remarkable.

Equally remarkable is this car's history, provenance and place in the pantheon of Aston Martin greats. It may superficially resemble one of the 75 DB4 GTs as it flashes past (or, to the less initiated, maybe even a DB5, thanks to the faired-in lights), but it is a crucial stepping stone in the company's road and race car history. And it's unique. Prototype 1 of one, known universally as DP199.

If value (a vulgar measure though it may be) can be taken as at least a rough guide to significance, the $6,765,000 this car made at auction when it last came up for public sale is around three times the current price of a concours GT: a pretty good indicator of the DB4 GT prototype's standing. In fact, when it sold at RM Sotheby's in Monterey in 2017, it was just as Aston Martin's 25 brand new continuation DB4 GT track cars were coming on stream at £1.5million apiece.

The reason for such financial reverence is that this car was not just the seed for the racing lightweight DB4 GTs (the MP203s), but also for the DB4 GT Zagatos and then the awesome project cars that followed in the early 1960s to bookend Aston Martin's feverish sports-racing era before the factory officially took up the cudgels again with Prodrive in 2004.