Happy anniversary, my sweet Aston

3:30AM. Time to get up. Time to get into our flatbed rental truck, drive from the Netherlands to Calais, catch the boat to cross the channel, drive to London and meet the man who was selling his 1974 Aston Martin V8 Saloon on Ebay.

Yes indeed, this car was a real Ebay purchase. And it started like many Ebay stories, while drooling over expensive dream cars on the Internet. Except that I actually had quite a bit of money in my pocket from the sale of my 1965 Pontiac Bonneville Sportscoupe. A few months earlier I bought an apartment with a garage that turned out to be too small for the Bonneville. So....Bonnie out, smaller car in. I wasn't sure yet what kind of car. And then there was the Ebay ad for an Aston Martin. A real Aston...

I was not the highest bidder. I could have shrugged and moved on with my life, but I just couldn't let this one go so easily. So I sent the seller a personal message. "Hello, If the highest bidder was a fraud, then please get in touch with me. I'm serious."

A week later I got a reply.

We emailed a bit back and forth and agreed on an inspection at a local Aston specialist. I booked boat tickets and rented the flatbed truck. And so it was on the morning of December 9th that I found myself on the road, together with my boyfriend at the time.

Afternoon. We arrived at Nicholas Mee, an Aston Martin specialist garage in London. We were a bit early and enjoyed the hospitality of the staff and the view of their showroom. A little while later we heard the slightly-out-of-tune rumbling of a V8 in the parking lot. I looked outside, and there she was...

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I fell in love right there and then. Luckily my boyfriend kept his head cool and insisted on waiting for the results of the inspection by Nicholas Mee. In the meantime we went for lunch with the seller. He told us how this car originally belonged to a prominent figure in the British music industry. It was always serviced at his father's workshop and so his father bought it in the early eighties and became the 2nd owner. His father passed away in the late nineties and the car hadn't seen much daylight ever since. Her days were being wasted. It was time to let her go.

The results of the inspection were not too good. Everything and more was wrong with it. However, the engine was solid, the interior was in very good shape and the bodywork wasn't all that bad. For an optimist like me that was enough good news. I took her for a small careful spin around the block and then loaded her on the flatbed. Time to bring her home!

Nothing to see here, move along...

Nothing to see here, move along...

The road back home was smooth, except that the people at the Dover Ferry Port now had much more reason to take notice of our truck and decided we were a commercial vehicle. We had to wait for the truckers boat, paid a hefty price for our ticket change and waited a few hours before loading.

We finally arrived home at 4:30AM. A 25-hour journey that kicked off a new chapter in my car love life. We've had many ups and downs, but I never felt a moment of regret. Happy anniversary darling.