Meet the Aston Martin DB2/4 that's an off-road champion

Surrounded by his immaculately stacked Aston Martins, with two cars suspended on hydraulic ramps above another couple, Carey's collection rests in what can only be described as an Aladdin’s cave of classic Astons. On the surrounding walls sit rally numbers, nameplates and plaques from his travels. Motoring memorabilia that only a handful of classics can lay claim to. But while his appetite for rallying in far-flung corners of the world is relatively recent, Carey's obsession with old cars is nothing new.

"I learnt to drive in 1963 and I then had my first car, a 1934 Austin Ruby. I paid ten pounds for it," he says with a smile. "It was the pride and joy of the landlord of the pub down the road from my school." Thrilled with his purchase, Carey's newfound freedom only lasted four months before a broken front spring saw him part ways with the Austin, leading him into a 1931 Standard Nine. "I bought that for £14 but having no mechanical knowledge spent most of my time trying to polish the corroded bonnet and radiator," he says laughing. Another three months passed and the Standard's engine blew, giving way to a 1935 Morris Eight. "My father helped me to buy the Morris, which cost ten pounds and my wife’s future brother-in-law rebuilt the engine for me." The Morris ran for another few months until an incident with a Ford Zephyr outside a pub wrote it off completely, marking the end of Carey's early classic car endeavours. "My first three cars cost £34 in aggregate, and then that was it. I went back to the bicycle! I was distraught. I felt I had bought about the destruction of these three fine old cars which were disappearing from the roads at a rapid rate anyway and had a hankering to make amends.”

Everyday motoring was fulfilled by a succession of company cars, and it wasn’t until 1980 while living in Dublin that Carey's craving for classic car ownership would be fulfilled, if only partially. "I saw an advertisement in the Irish Times for an Aston Martin DB2/4 for sale. I wasn’t familiar with the make or model but arranged to go and see it. It was in a very sorry state – the front had been damaged, it was full of feathers and muck, it had been driven only around a farm in recent years and one shock absorber was missing completely."

Paying £900 for the car, Carey was now the proud owner of a DB era Aston, which he (painstakingly and expensively) brought back to life over the next six years. "The cost of the engine rebuild alone was more than we had paid for our first house 12 years earlier, but somehow we managed to find the money and by 1986, it was back on the road. I was so pleased to have brought this masterpiece of British design and engineering excellence back to life, which helped to compensate for my destruction of the three old timers back in the ‘60’s!"

Perhaps it was the cathartic experience of piecing together such a neglected classic, but the vintage car bug had bitten hard. "I got a lot of use out of it for eight years until about 1994,” he says, “when I had an opportunity to buy a DB4 – I couldn't part with “the baby” as the 2/4 had become known in the family, so that's where the collecting started!"

Some 13 years and a handful of changes later and Carey once again found himself searching for a DB2/4. "I had recently retired from working full time and had the opportunity to participate in a long-distance non-competitive “friendship” endurance classic car rally from Panama to Alaska, planned by the Global Rally Organisation.” Rather than butcher the 2/4, Carey sought to find a suitable “donor” vehicle which could be modified for the purpose. Finding a dilapidated 1958 DB2/4 MkIII, Carey placed it in the hands of classic Aston Martin specialists Davron to carry out a full restoration, including rally preparation. Deliberately avoiding the well-trodden path of returning a car to its original state, Carey had the suspension strengthened, a quarter-inch aluminium sump guard added, the rear chassis reinforced and added in-car insulation, rally seats, inertia seatbelts, disc brakes all round and a modified radiator core to cope with the expected extremes of heat on the trip. Alongside these modifications, the engine was entirely rebuilt to a higher specification than original including a new performance cylinder head and triple carburation – the aluminium body required significant refurbishment before a complete respray in Aston Martin ‘racing green’ and interior retrim took place. "Oh, and I took the bumpers off, as the car looks so much better without them!" he says.

Now ready to embark on his first adventure, Carey had, in effect, a completely new, rally-spec DB2/4 MkIII at his disposal. Not one to start off small, Carey and his steed set off on the 12,500-mile Panama to Alaska Rally in 2008, which took him and different members of his family together with 17 other participants in a wide range of classic cars through Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize and Mexico before entering the United States. Heading up through North America via ‘Canyonland,’ the journey continued through Salt Lake City and on to Canada, where they travelled by the Trans American highway to Dawson City before crossing back into the USA for the final leg through Alaska to the finish line in Anchorage. Despite many teething problems and persistent clutch trouble following the restoration, the rally was a great success and would prove to be the first of many epic road trips for the pair.

With a taste for the Global Rally format and driving in challenging conditions, the next adventure was the  circumnavigation of the Mediterranean in the ‘Rallye Med’ in 2010. Another 12,500-mile drive took him and his fellow adventurers from Morocco, up through Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Tunisia and into Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. "The reaction from local people when they saw  the make of the unfamiliar car in their midst was to shout  'Aston Martin – James Bond!', although they didn’t think I looked much like 007!" he remembers.

Leaving the Middle East just days before the Arab Spring in December 2010, the Rally’s route looped back through Turkey, Greece, Albania, up the Dalmatian Coast to Zagreb and on to Austria and Germany before finishing in Rheims, France. "This was a phenomenal rally because of the huge political and social upheaval that's taken place since we were there. Our trip through Libya was remarkable for the posters to Gaddafi on every lamp post, now long gone, and poignantly we visited and admired the wonderfully preserved ancient ruins at Palmyra before they were destroyed by ISIS.”

Despite an altercation with a rock face in Croatia, Carey and the faithful Aston went on to participate in two further Global Rallies, with the penultimate being La Gira Andina, from Columbia to Cape Horn in 2010. Measuring in at 10,000-miles, the run through South America was no less significant than his other adventures, taking in 'Volcano Alley' in the Andes and passing through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, while reaching heights of 16,000ft above sea level and crossing deserts and salt lakes in Bolivia. "I was forced at one point to clean the interior as I couldn't read the dials, they were so thick with dust," says Carey, shrugging off what many classic owners would shudder to contemplate.

After taking in the Andes and a significant part of Latin America, Carey found himself embarking on one more adventure four years later, which took him and his DB2/4 MkIII across the USA, the long way around, of course. Another epic 10,000-mile journey lay ahead, which took him and his companions from Los Angeles, up the Western Coast to the Canadian border before travelling back South through Montana, down through Monument Valley to Moab and the canyons, before heading due east to Kansas, and then down South to New Orleans. From there, the trail went North to Nashville, through the Carolinas and Virginia, passing between New York and Washington and up to Vermont to witness the Autumn Leaves before the last drive down to Boston. Lasting seven weeks, Carey's fourth rally left him physically exhausted at the time, but the car is still in great shape to this day, having surpassed the 80,000-mile mark since its restoration in 2007.

With four epic rallies under his belt, Carey is now well retired having covered an impressive proportion of the Middle East and Western world. Confident the car has more to give, the classic car adventurer would have to head East to take on any new challenges, but for now journeys are limited to local and continental short haul experiences. Despite spending more than 80,000 miles behind the wheel of a late 1950’s car, Carey's time with the Aston Martin DB 2/4 MkIII has done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm nor change his approach to classic ownership. "It just goes to show the cars were made to be driven and there is so much pleasure to be gained from using them extensively,” he insists.

While owning and maintaining classics is challenging enough for the vast majority of car collectors, Carey is a fine example of a true car enthusiast, unafraid and intrepid in his automotive exploits. "It's been a life-changing experience, retiring and setting off to all these different countries,” he says. “The car and I have had a wonderful time!”