Aston Martin’s first great endurance racer

There were no stern warnings, nor even a friendly reminder of the car’s value. That hasn’t so much as been mentioned, but I feel it towering over me like a grave schoolmaster nonetheless. I suppose when the owner is this relaxed and the car in question as special as it is, the only polite thing to do is fire it up and drive.

The DB3S was the first genuinely successful post-war Aston Martin racing sports car. It didn’t win Le Mans or the World Sportscar Championship like the later DBR1, but it was the bridge between it and the underpowered, overweight DB3 that came before. John Wyer was responsible for Aston Martin’s racing efforts at the time, and of the older machine he said: ‘We weren’t happy with the DB3, it was too big and too heavy and had been rather disappointing.’

The DB3S was a development of the DB3, but as comprehensive a redevelopment as you’ll find. Designed by Willie Watson in just five months in 1953, it retained only the engine, gearbox and front suspension from the car with which Wyer had been so disappointed. Everything else was new, the DB3S made narrower, lighter, shorter and – thanks to Frank Feeley’s more aerodynamic bodywork – more beautiful than the DB3.

The 3-litre engine was still the same twin-cam straight-six that had originally been designed by WO Bentley for Lagonda a decade earlier. Once a twin-plug head had been designed, the power output of the factory cars was around 235bhp, which wasn’t a match for that enjoyed by drivers of 3.4-litre straight-six Jaguar D-types and V12 Ferraris. Nevertheless, the new car was able to lap Monza four seconds quicker during its first test than the wheezing old DB3 ever did.

Top drawer drivers such as Tony Brooks, Reg Parnell, Peter Collins, Roy Salvadori and Stirling Moss found it well-balanced, easy to drive at the limit and durable over longer races, but on circuits with very long straights its relatively underpowered six would run out of puff while the more potent engines in rival cars would continue to haul. How frustrating it must have been to watch those Jaguars and Ferraris roar off into the distance whenever the road went straight.

Elsewhere, particularly on circuits that favoured handling over power, the DB3S was a contender. Its first big win came in 1953 at the RAC Tourist Trophy in Dundrod, Northern Ireland. Collins and Pat Griffith won the race after 10 hours, while a sister car driven by Parnell and Eric Thompson finished second just three minutes behind. The DB3S and – rather more to the point – Aston Martin were now winners at the highest level.

The works campaigned the DB3S over four seasons, during which time it clinched a sackful of non-championship race wins, including two at Goodwood, and finished second overall at Le Mans in 1955 and 1956 and once more as a private entry in 1958. But in terms of success it was overshadowed by the DBR1 that did win the big prizes. The DB3S can rightly, however, be described as the car that gave Aston Martin the confidence to compete with titans like Jaguar, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Maserati on the world stage.

In much the same way the last generation of LMP1 cars all looked somewhat alike, these mid-Fifties sports cars resemble one another with their open two-seat cabins, front-engined layouts, streamlined bodywork with elegantly curved wheel arches, spindly wire wheels, vestigial windscreens and often a raised hump behind the driver to smooth the airflow over the back of the car. The DB3S, though, has often been described as the most beautiful of the lot, its heavily contoured front wheel wells lending it a lithe, shrink-wrapped appearance.

The one I’m sitting in now is the last of the 10 works cars, known as DB3S/10 (a further 20 customer machines were built). It was built in 1956 and so features disc rather than drum brakes, an aluminium twin-plug head and distinctive wheel arch extensions.

Salvadori and Peter Walker raced it at Le Mans that year, though their race finished early when the latter crashed in the rain after 16 hours and the car was heavily damaged. How strange it is to think that the mangled car I’ve seen in photographs is the one I’m about to fire into life, 65 years later.

Despite that, I really am calm. I know the car has disc brakes, synchromesh on each gear, a conventional H-pattern four-speed manual gearbox and pedals in the familiar sequence (far from a given with race cars of this era). Reverse requires you to lift the gear lever up with both hands and pull it towards you and down, so I won’t somehow select it by mistake. It’s all so familiar it really could be an MX-5…

Of course, the joy of such cars and one of the real reasons they’re so valuable today (particularly compared to contemporary Formula 1 cars that can only be run in controlled environments) is that Fifties Le Mans racers can be driven on the public highway. That’s where we are today, on quiet roads in the Cotswolds, me counting my blessings not only for the opportunity to drive this machine, but to get to do so on the last day of summer with not a cloud in the sky.

I push and hold the grey rubber button beneath the dash to run the starter motor. As the engine turns over I flick the toggle to the right of the steering wheel to switch on the ignition, releasing the grey button as I do so. The engine sparks into life and settles into a busy idle. The exhaust exits on the right side of the car just behind the trailing edge of the driver’s door, so if I were to let my right arm drop over the top of the door I’d feel the fumes panting against my fingertips.

The clutch isn’t heavy and first gear slots in without effort. Pulling away is a doddle, the six pistons working against so little weight they get the car rolling barely above idle. But while making the DB3S move is in no way troubling, I am concerned by how exposed I feel. My head rises high above the hump behind me so there’s no rollover protection whatsoever. The car is small but the cabin feels spacious and I sit unharnessed in the seat with very little to brace myself against. There’s a leather pad on the transmission tunnel against which I can press my left knee, but my right one wanders about in the space left by the convex curve of the door.

So the thin wooden wheel with its three skinny metal spars is half a device for steering with, and half a grab handle for fixing oneself in position. Even in first gear I’m disconcerted by the lack of belts. In a big crash I’ll at best be flung free, but in a small or medium one? I can see my face smashing against the wheel, the small screen or the dashboard.

I try not to think about that as I ease the gearbox into second like I’ve been told to. Finding each of the four forward ratios is easy because the lever has a well-defined gate, but at first I’m crunching the odd gear. I wonder if I need to be rev matching or double de-clutching, but in fact all it takes is patience and a slow, steady left hand. The steering is light with some play around the straight ahead but after that it’s precise, so guiding the car along between the hedgerow on my left and what little oncoming traffic there is on my right takes no real concentration.

With the wind rushing by my ears the engine doesn’t seem terribly noisy. It draws air through three twin-choke Webers and revs heartily, but not quickly. With plenty of torque it pulls happily from 1500rpm. You must keep your right foot buried to allow engine speeds to build, and soon the car surges forwards. It doesn’t feel especially quick by modern sports car standards and you realise in that moment how crucial it would have been to maintain speed and momentum in a race, keeping the engine spinning as close to 6000rpm as possible.

Apart from feeling so utterly exposed, it’s the skill it would have taken to drive one of these machines quickly that I can’t get my head around. To be happy with it sliding at speed, balanced on the edge, never allowing the motor to drop out of its sweet spot, changing gear patiently enough that the gears don’t grind but without giving away any lap time… It all seems like some impossible dance. It is as bewildering to me that anybody could pedal one of these things flat-out as it is that anyone can drive a modern 1000bhp Formula 1 car on the limit.

I can see the tell-tale needle in the rev counter showing 5500rpm or so, but I daren’t venture beyond 4500. Amazingly, the suspension feels pliant and forgiving, so the DB3S is actually comfortable even across bumpy B-roads. The brakes are reassuring, too, though the amount of hot air flooding the cabin from the engine bay gives me a worrying sense the thing might combust at any moment.

For more reasons than I can list, it is with an overwhelming feeling of relief that I hand the DB3S back to its owner. Aston Martin’s first truly competitive endurance racer is far and away the most valuable car I’ve ever driven, plus the oldest. It’s also right up there with the most memorable.