Aston Martin DB7: The ‘Half-Asston’ Is a Lemons Supercar

While Lemons has yet to see a proper Ferrari, supercars have occasionally cropped up in Lemons. Of course, definitions of “supercar” may vary, but we’ve seen Porsche 911s, Maseratis, V12 Jaguars, and Darko’s notorious Viper-powered Rolls Royce. However, perhaps the representative example of a Lemons supercar was the Inglorious Bastards’ “Half-Asston Martin” DB7.

Yes, that is a real Aston Martin DB7. At least, the body is a real Aston Martin body. The Texas-based Inglorious Bastards’ team captain Gerry Ringle had recently retired the team’s tired MN12 Ford Thunderbird. Since he’d acquired the Aston as just a shell, most of the Lemons Aston has Thunderbird subframes, suspension, and driveline.

Under the hood sits the Thunderbird’s 5.0-liter V8. It might be slightly warmed over, but Gerry and his team have—as the team name suggests—never sought much glory through things like “winning” or “trying real hard.” Instead, they invest their Lemons capital in making their car look good, feeding their team (and other teams) well, and just enjoying the ambience. That’s actually winning at Lemons.

As such, it comes as no surprise that the Asston Martin only came together for the 2019 Cain’t Get Bayou race at the last minute. There were some not-uncharacteristic-for-a-British-car fit-and-finish issues. But the DB7 did get on track eventually and is allegedly ready for a return to racing in 2020 in slightly better form.

But How Did It Get to Lemons?

Indeed, this is the real question for such a lux automobile. We’re about 99 percent sure this is the same DB7 that three other Texas Lemons racers pulled out of a storage facility back in 2013. An Australian owned the car, parked what was left of it in storage, and then left the country. After a few years without any paid rent, the landlord liquidated the facility.

Like proper Lemons racers should, the Texas Trio showed up promptly with a few bucks short of the $650 asking price and the means to remove it. To boot, they helped out the landlord by taking a few boxes of Aston Martin parts, which they sold off to recover easily the small price they paid. And that, friends, is how you score a Lemons car that once had a sticker price around $150,000.

Life intervened, we suspect, for those intrepid (though not Intrepid) Lemons racers. Eventually, Gerry Ringle got his mitts on the DB7’s remains and the rest, well, that’s history.

So What’s Next?

We’re still waiting for a proper Lemons Ferrari, even with the less-desirable ones increasing in price, but we think a proper basketcase with a good story could be found. And since we’ve had a Ferrari-bodied Pontiac Fiero (above), the obvious inversion would be a Ferrari 308 clad with body panels from the Hall & Oates-endorsed GM mid-engined machine. Consider that an officially issued challenge.

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