003 | The Half Aston
‘The Dodge’s engine, being a 225cu in (or 3.7-litre) straight-six, was a remarkably good match for the Aston powerplant and a good fit under the bonnet’
Wilford, Wife, Dino and DB5
Receipt for the sale of the car by Alvin Lopez to Wilford Day in June 1971.
ALVIN LOPEZ CLEARLY DIDN’T BOND WITH THE DB5 the same way that Andy Lacey had, because by 1971 it was up for sale again. The advertisement – in a car magazine, probably Road & Track – caught the eye of Utah-based 30-something petrolhead Wilford Day, who just happened to be looking for a European GT to add to his collection of American muscle-cars and who – like so many others – was drawn to the DB5’s beguiling lines. So Wilford and his equally car-crazy brother Allan travelled to view the car in a small town just north of Pomona, California. And on 5 June 1971 he bought DB5/2266/L – for a not-inconsiderable $3800, or around $25,000 in today’s money. And so ANOTHER AMAZING CHAPER IN THE ASTON’S LIFE WAS ABOUT TO BEGIN. To say that it didn’t get off to the best of starts would be an understatement. In fact things started to go wrong on the drive home. Speaking many years later, Wilford would recall: ‘As we came home it started knocking. So we slowed down from 60 or 70 miles an hour down to 45. And we drove back from California at 45 miles an hour because then the knock went away. ‘So we got home and I tried to figure out what to do and I found a man in Salt Lake who was a specialist in English cars. He found the valve gear needed adjustment, but the knocking was a connecting rod bearing on the crankshaft. It cost me over a thousand dollars to overhaul the engine.’ But that wasn’t the end of it. The Days then discovered that the transmission had been damaged by having been run low on oil. The obvious options were either a new ZF five-speed transmission from Germany or a full rebuild – and the likely cost of either was an eye-watering $3000. FACED WITH SUCH A BILL, DRASTIC ACTION WAS CALLED FOR – and this is where the story of DB5/2266/L takes another fascinating twist. Wilford Day wasn’t your average Aston owner – if such a thing exists. Yes, he was comfortably off, having made money in the water softener business and later from trading cars in Cedar City. He also bought and restored cars for fun, owning more than 100 over the years. He was what you would call a genuine car-nut, with a particular passion for American muscle-cars and European thoroughbreds. BUT WHAT REALLY SET WILFORD APART WAS A PASSION FOR SPEED – and specifically competing in speed trials on the Bonneville Salt Flats. As a young man in the 1960s he was a Bonneville regular, as was brother Allan – both of them following in the wheel tracks of their father, who had also competed on the vast salt-pan. Sometimes Wilford would race in a Plymouth Barrucada – on several occasions he competed against Ak Miller, a legend of the US hot-rodding scene, in his Ford Mustang. At other times Wilford would race a Dodge Lancer sedan (or saloon, as it would be known in Europe). It was in the Dodge that he set a Production Sedan Class speed record at 152mph, making it – at the time – the world’s fastest six-cylinder four-door. NOW, FACED WITH ANOTHER SUBSTANTIAL BILL TO FIX THE ASTON, WILFORD HIT ON A NOVEL SOLUTION. ‘I had a Dodge engine and transmission sitting on my garage on the floor, that had just barely come home from Bonneville. I said, to hell with purity…’
The ‘Half-Aston’ made frequent appearances at race tracks.
The ‘Half-Aston’ made frequent appearances at race tracks, as well as at more informal Owners’ Club events, in this case the 1976
In fact the Dodge’s engine, being a 225cu in (or 3.7-litre) straight-six, was a good match for the Aston powerplant and a good fit under the bonnet. It was also a fairly light unit, having an aluminium block like the Aston’s where most would be iron, so the handling wouldn’t be spoiled. And it was at least as powerful as the Aston engine – in fact the Days detuned it slightly to make it easier to live with. ‘THE 225 ENGINE WAS PUTTING OUT 300 TROUBLE- FREE HORSEPOWER,’ Wilford would later recall. ‘We installed a milder cam and lowered the compression ratio for use in the Aston, though we used the same Weber carbs. ‘And the engine and transmission were in the Aston for 35 years and 40,000 miles with no problems.’ Now with its new bombproof powertrain, Wilford began to use the DB5 extensively, driving all over Utah and further afield. Photographs show it at various locations in Arizona including the Grand Canyon, in Baja California, in Nevada, heading south of Tijuana, driving the Laguna Seca raceway… ‘After I got it fixed, YOU COULD JUST GET IN, TURN THE KEY AND GO ANYWHERE YOU WANT!’ he would explain. Many of its outings would be on Aston Martin Owners Club timed ‘regularity’ rallies, where crews had to keep to a set average speed over a prescribed root. Wilford would also show the car, winning a number of trophies over the years. And fellow members seem to have been perfectly accepting of the DB5’s heart transplant. Indeed THEY GAVE THE CAR AN AFFECTIONATE NICKNAME: THE HALF-ASTON. Meanwhile, business was clearly good in the 1970s because Wilford and his wife also bought a Ferrari Dino, making for a perfectly matched pair of European thoroughbreds. But it was always the Aston that had a special place in their hearts. As Wilford would recall: ‘We sold the Dino after four years, but we kept the Aston. It was part of the family. We loved it.’ So what was the appeal to an American petrolhead? ‘It’s a very good looking car. The curves are so beautiful. And it rides so well. It’s a very comfortable car. And wherever we went, everybody recognised the car and waved – because it was the James Bond car.’ WILFORD LAVISHED MUCH MONEY ON THE DB5 IN A REMARKABLE 35 YEARS OF OWNERSHIP – including a full respray in the original white and a set of new chrome wire wheels with three-eared knock-off ‘spinners’ rather than the original two-eared items – simply because he preferred the looks. This chapter, though, would not have a happy ending. On 4 July 2006 he was preparing to take the Aston into town for the annual Independence Day celebrations, started the engine and went back into the house to make a cup of tea while it warmed through. When he came back out JUST A FEW SHORT MINUTES LATER, THERE WAS A FIRE IN THE ENGINE BAY. ‘I grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the fire out,’ he would later recount. ‘But it had been hot for 30-45 seconds and it scorched everything.’ The likely cause of the blaze was an ill-fitting fuel line. As Wilford recalled: ‘I’d just had the carburettors overhauled, and one of the fuel lines wasn’t a good fit…’ The damage wasn’t severe – the engine bay itself was charred and there was some damage to the paintwork on the front wings and bonnet, but for Wilford it was heartbreaking.
Wilford competing in the 1975 Virginia City Hillclimb.
Now in his 70s, he decided that he couldn’t face taking on another major project with the Aston. ‘I WAS SAD. IT WAS PART OF OUR FAMILY,’ he would explain. ‘And you have all those wonderful memories of all the fun things you’ve done with it, and all the places and the neat people you meet. ‘But we were getting old and I looked at that mess under the hood and I said, nope, we’re not going to overhaul it and we’re not going to restore it ourselves. We’re going to sell the car.’ And so he did – through an online eBay auction, which attracted around 30 bidders, some of them from as far away as Europe. When the auction closed, however, it was a Los Angeles-based collector who had the winning bid. ‘The guy brought a trailer and they started loading it and I remember he took some photos to send to his wife and he was as happy as Christmas morning. ‘I was sad. That was part of our family. You know? That’s just like seeing a child get hauled away…’ And that might very well have been the last the Days would have seen or heard of the Aston, except that FATE HAD ANOTHER TWIST IN STORE FOR THIS REMARKABLE CAR.
