This Junkyard Aston Martin Could Be Your Cheapest Way To V12 Heaven
There are plenty of automotive enthusiasts who will completely disregard a car they love if it has a few flaws. but only a sucker would buy a car with a salvage title or with previous crash damage, no matter how good the repairs. I am nothing if not a sucker, and this gorgeous Fly Yellow Aston Martin DB7 Volante is really making me think about putting up a bid. It would be damn near impossible to find another one, in spite of its branded title and minor passenger side damage. This bad boy is coming up for auction on Copart from a yard in Knoxville, Tennessee. and if you outbid me, it could be yours.
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Image: Copart
I have been somewhat passively seeking a V12 automatic convertible DB7 for a couple of years now, as the prices continue to trend downward. While the manual coupes have already started to balloon upward, nobody seems to want the convertibles or the automatics. I want one specifically because it would be nice to have a long-legged grand tourer to take out on weekends. Besides, the V12 is basically a pair of Ford V6s bolted together, so how bad could the maintenance possibly be?
New for 1999, the V12 Vantage featured a 5.9-liter 48-valve V12 making 420 horsepower and 400 lb-ft of torque. The automatic in use here is a ZF-built 5HP30 five-speed, which was also used in thousands of BMWs, Bentleys, and Rolls-Royces through the 1990s and early 2000s (a four-wheel drive version was used by Audi and Volkswagen V8 and W12 vehicles through 2011). It could hit a top speed of 186 miles per hour, and sprinted from 0-60 in an unhurried 4.9 seconds. The new V12 was so successful that it completely derailed sales of the base model DB7 with a supercharged inline six.
Image: Copart
There’s no mention in the listing of what happened to the car for it to end up here. The dash currently displays just 46,255 miles on the clock. About 10,o00 miles ago the car was listed for sale in California, and after that it was in North Carolina for a while, where it sold at auction twice in 2016 and 2018.
Copart says the car has a branded title, but doesn’t say what the cause was. The damage to the right side looks minor, but could be hiding something bigger, and the interior is somewhat dismantled, though all of the parts seem to be included in the sale. It is a “run & drive” vehicle, but the listing has absolutely no notes from the seller, which is concerning.
Image: Copart
With values of driver-grade DB7 Vantage Volantes somewhere around the low 30,000s, it would certainly be a risk to bid on this one, but maybe a risk worth taking. If you lose you could be facing some big repair bills, but either way you end up with a big V12 in a luxury convertible. If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right. A little spit shine and this car could be damn near perfect.
