{"id":609421,"date":"2026-09-23T17:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T17:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/609421\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T17:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T17:36:16","slug":"the-tricks-to-keeping-a-100-year-old-aston-martin-on-track-and-in-the-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/609421\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tricks to Keeping a 100-Year-Old Aston Martin on Track and in the Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\tStay up to speed with stories written by drivers, for drivers.<\/p>\n

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Propped up at a jaunty angle in the driving seat of Rob Murray\u2019s 1922 Aston Martin Grand Prix is a life-size cardboard cutout of Count Louis Zborowski<\/a>. It\u2019s an immediate indication of how Murray enjoys this priceless piece of British automotive history, and doesn\u2019t just revere it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father bought it in 1958 for \u00a3145 plus five pounds delivery charge,\u201d he says, as a small crowd gathers around it in the paddock at Brooklands<\/a> to celebrate the centenary of the first ever British Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

The Aston is even older, having been commissioned by Zborowski\u2014the Anglo-American racer, best known for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang<\/a>\u2014as one of a pair of cars to race in the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy. Zborowski invested the sizable sum of \u00a310,000 (over a million dollars in today\u2019s money), but the cars weren\u2019t ready until the French Grand Prix at Strasbourg in July 1922. The Count drove TT1\u2014also known as Green Pea\u2014and Clive Gallop took the wheel of TT2. Both cars unfortunately suffered failures of their 1.5-liter 16-valve engines, with Zborowski retiring on lap 19, and Gallop joining him on lap 30 out of 60.<\/p>\n

\"1922Aston Martin<\/p>\n

Green Pea also failed to finish in Barcelona that year, but when Aston Martin founders Lionel Martin and Robert Banford sold the car to Marion Agnew in 1923, it had better luck. Bobby Morgan drove it to a second-place finish at the Grand Prix de Boulogne; it won the gold medal in the MCC London\/Land\u2019s End Trial, and Agnew took victory in the 1924 JCC Ladies Race at Brooklands. The car rejoined the podium in France in 1925, too.<\/p>\n

In more recent years, Green Pea has appeared at Pebble Beach and was driven by four-time Formula 1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel in a centenary parade for Aston Martin at the 2022 French Grand Prix. \u201cGreen Pea holds a very special place in Aston Martin\u2019s heritage, and you can almost feel that century of history beneath your fingertips when at the wheel,\u201d said Vettel afterwards.<\/p>\n

\"1922Nik Berg<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"1922Nik Berg<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"1922Nik Berg<\/a> <\/p>\n

All this, and more, is detailed in Murray\u2019s lengthy history file, and while he\u2019s not exactly blas\u00e9 about the Aston, having grown up with it as part of the family, he certainly doesn\u2019t see it as an investment to sit and accrue value. Never restored to concours condition, Green Pea is patinated, showing a century of racing in paint nicks and scratches.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first car I ever drove,\u201d he explains. \u201cI inherited it from my father, and my son Jake will inherit it from me.\u201d Jake\u2019s first competitive drive in the car didn\u2019t quite go to plan, however, when his inaugural hill climb ended right at the start, with the rear axle collapsing. Replacing it wasn\u2019t exactly straightforward.<\/p>\n

\"RobNik Berg<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to get everything made,\u201d says Murray. \u201cThe only thing you don\u2019t get made is wheels and tires. We\u2019re very lucky in that we\u2019ve got a lot of the drawings of the chassis and stuff, so we can get bits made. But the rest of it is working out how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt dropped a valve back in 2012 and damaged the valve carrier. Fortunately, it wasn\u2019t masses of damage. It\u2019s got these bucket shims that follow the valve and are pushed down by the cap, and it just turned out that Fiat 126 bucket shims were like half a mil bigger, and that was enough to clean it up. The other advantage is that these bucket shims had the shim underneath. You have to build it all up, take it all apart, putting the shim in. The Fiat one is in the top, so you build it up, measure it, just whip out the shim, and then put a new one in. So, it\u2019s stuff like that, finding something that fits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray says that over the last eight years, \u201cwe\u2019ve been using it sporadically because we\u2019ve had the engine go, then we had the clutch go, and the clutch is quite unique. Although there\u2019s lots of the type, there aren\u2019t many of this size. I had to get all the plates made, and I had to get bits made to get the plates made. So, it all took ages, and then the back axle went in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"1922Nik Berg<\/a> <\/p>\n

Now in full working order once again, Jake will do the competitive driving at sprints and hill climb events, while these days Rob prefers to drive Green Pea on the road, despite its indelible place in Aston Martin\u2019s lore.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually drive it on the road quite a lot. I like driving it on the road now, although I didn\u2019t used to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lived with it all my life. This was in the family in \u201958, and I arrived in \u201966. So I don\u2019t think about [the value]. It\u2019s there. It\u2019s a car, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s there to be used, and the more you use them, the better they are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay up to speed with stories written by drivers, for drivers. Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[300255,55010,300254,300253,300256,300257,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-609421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-1922-aston-martin-gp","tag-aston-martin","tag-aston-martin-green-pea","tag-car-aston-martin","tag-count-zborowski","tag-grand-prix-racing","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}