Mystery Car at Brands Hatch

[Will Silk]

Berry Brooke is known throughout the UK for his involvement at all levels in British Motorsport. Berry recently contacted SCD to ask for help in identifying a car that he snapped a photo of in the paddock of Brands Hatch, circa 1960-1961.

The program lists the car as an Aston Jaguar, however it is unclear as to a hybrid of such pedigree ever being created.

Take a look at the pic and feel free to comment with your ideas as to the mystrey car's true identity.

[Will Silk]

After months of wondering and over 600 views of the initial post, it seems that the Brands Hatch mystery car has been properly identified.

Earlier I received an email from John Kerruish that outlines the history and brings this mystery to a close. John's words are below:

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The car started life as Aston Martin DB3 Chassis No:6. It was built and first-registered as FHH 534 by the factory at Feltham in 1953. This effectively makes it a less-well-known sister to the famous 'UPL' and 'VMF' series cars of Goodwood and Le Mans fame. By mid-1954 it had been re-bodied as a coupe by Paul Emery, well-known as the designer of the Emeryson 500cc front-wheel-drive F3 and other single-seaters. Perhaps more importantly, Emery had also fitted a 265bhp power-unit from an ex-works C-Type Jaguar, the original 2.6 litre Aston straight-six being transferred to one of the above VMF series works DB2 Le Mans Astons.

Sometime later, again and with a further change of owner, the car received another, bespoke, coupe body with gull-wing doors and subsequently was re-registered NV 64 (This is a Northamptonshire, England registration.) Further, increasingly bizarre, bodywork modifications were undertaken until the prettiest, iteration was arrived at - as depicted in Berry's Brands Hatch shot.

The car went on to be re-bodied and re-registered yet again. This time as 778 RPH ( A pre-1963 Surrey, England plate.) The bodywork by now having begun to look a little like a mid-sixties Iso Grifo/Bizzarini (To my eyes anyway.)

It goes on even beyond this, but we've done enough to establish the car's (ever-changing) identity.

My sources were principally: 'Racing the David Brown Aston Martins' by the late Chris Nixon, 'Aston Martin The Post-War Competition Cars' by Anthony Pritchard and 'Sports Car Racing In Camera 1950-59' by Paul Parker. I also credit the French 'Astonuts' web-site. For the life of me I cannot paste a working link to this site so, for those interested, please Google 'astonuts' and having located the site, follow the internal menu to 'The DB3 with the FHC Body.'which contains many pictures of the car in all its guises.

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Good Work John!