SHAKE IT UP

RINGBROTHERS ONCE AGAIN RAISES THE BAR FOR CUSTOM CAR BUILDS WITH ITS LATEST CREATION, A RADICAL TAKE ON A CLASSIC BRITISH SPORTS CAR

- BORIS VISKOVIC

JIM and Mike Ring, owners of the Wisconsin-based car-crafting workshop, Ringbrothers, should be no strangers to Street Machine readers. We've featured several of the siblings’ incredible concept car-style builds in the past, including the ‘Recoil’ 1966 Chevelle pro tourer (SM, Feb '15); the Hellephant-powered ‘Tusk’ 1969 Dodge Charger (SM, Apr '24); and the hot pink 1970 Plymouth Barracuda dubbed ‘Infected’, which rocks a blown Hellcrate Redeye mill (SM, Jan '25). But their latest creation, a completely reimagined 1971 Aston Martin DBS called ‘Octavia’, is a cut above even by Ringbrothers’ exacting standards. And it all began with an unusual request from a client.

“He actually asked us what we wanted to build, and we said a European muscle car,” says Mike Ring. “So, he went home and started looking on the web, and within a few weeks we had a 1971 Aston Martin DBS in the shop. We'd never seen an older Aston Martin; we had no idea what this car was.”

Thus began what Jim Ring describes as the brothers’ most ambitious creation to date. “It's the wildest thing we've done, and the most challenging,” he says.

One look at the photos and you begin to understand why. With most of Ringbrothers’ previous builds, the car was stripped down to a skeleton and new panels were then mounted to the factory inner structure, but that wasn't the case with this Aston Martin. “Once we de-skinned it, there was nothing there that we could build off,” says Mike. “We tried to use more of the original car, but it didn’t lend itself to that process. We used the power window switches and some parts from inside the door, and not much else.”