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Rare 1958 Aston to be auctioned in Tennessee

Decaying Aston Martins are showing up on the auction block all over the world. The final, original DBS recently went up for bid in the UK, and to go up for sale on the other side of the Atlantic, a 1958 DB Mark III was recently found wasting away in a Tennessee garage. "I didn't know much about it, except it was old and worth some money," said owner Tammy Maxwell to Clarksville Now. Her husband bought the Aston in Hawaii in 1975 and carried the car along with him until the family settled in Tennessee. He originally intended to restore it but an illness got in the way. Now, the vintage coupe is crossing the auction block in Cumberland Furnace, TN, on April 11 through Auction World Gallery. This example is in very rough shape, though. The paint and trim are gone from the entire front end, and the interior is a rat's nest of parts. There's no mention of whether the powertrain is intact, although a crankshaft is visible sitting in the boot and possibly a carb on the passenger seat. It's going to be a big project to get this Mark III back on the road. According to Aston Martin, the company built just 552 examples of the DB Mark III, and 462 of them were the coupe body style shown here that featured a hatchback. Power came from a 2.9-liter inline-six routed through a four-speed manual gearbox. The car also grabbed a unique footnote in pop culture history as James Bond's car in the book Goldfinger, rather than the DB5 in the film version.

Aston Martin confirms DP-100 for Gran Turismo 6 and Goodwood debut

Gran Turismo 6 is set to come to life this weekend at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. That's where Mercedes-AMG will run its Vision Gran Turismo and Nissan will show a full-size mockup of its Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo. Now Aston Martin has announced it's getting in on the action as well with its Design Prototype 100. Aston has released a video two teaser images to give us a hint at what it's working on, but will reveal the finished product in the Supercar Paddock at Goodwood tomorrow, although we don't know if that will be in the form of a scale model, a full-size show car, a series of design sketches or a virtual rendition existing only in the game. From the look of the two images, though, it appears that we're dealing with an LMP-style racer with Aston's ubiquitous V12 mounted in the middle of a carbon-fiber chassis. What we do know for certain is that, when it's released for download next month, it will be the latest (but certainly not the last) in a long line of concepts designed specifically for driving on the PlayStation 3.

1965 Aston Martin DB5 Convertible fetches record $2 million in Paris

Aston Martin and Ferrari may occupy similar territory in the current market for new cars, or at least overlap, but when it comes to their respective classics, they're in different leagues. While some classic Ferraris can sell at auction for eight figures, the highest prices ever paid for classic Astons work out to seven. That makes this latest result something of a world record. At its recent auction, held at the Grand Palais in Paris during the Retromobile classic car show this past weekend, venerated auction house Bonhams sold a 1965 Aston Martin DB5 Convertible (one of just 35 left-hand-drive models made) for the equivalent of $2.14 million. That makes it the highest price ever paid for a production DB5 - coupe or convertible - in the history of automobile auctions, driving the most successful automobile auction Bonhams has ever held in Europe. It was not, strictly speaking, the most ever paid for any Aston, however. That honor, according to Sports Car Market, goes to the 1955 DB3S racer that Gooding & Co. sold for $5.5 million at Pebble Beach last year. Nor was it the most expensive DB5 (modified or otherwise), after the highly modified one from the James Bond movies Goldfinger and Thunderball sold for $4.6 million back in 2010. This latest record easily eclipsed other production DB5s, though: The most we'd ever seen a standard model sell for was $1.65M at RM's auction in Monterey last year. Other high-priced Aston auctions include a Zagato-bodied 1960 DB4 GT "Jet" ($5M, Bonhams 2013), another DB3S ($3.7M, RM 2012), a '57 DBR2 ($3.4M, Christie's 1985), a Ghia-bodied '56 DB2/4 ($2.3M, RM 2013) and a series of DB4 GTs that have gone for between $2.2 and $2.7 million.