The DB2/4 MkIII Drophead Coupe is still the ultimate convertible Aston

You might argue the new Bentley Continental GTC qualifies as opposition because it’s at least a true convertible rather than a Spider and has twelve cylinders under its bonnet, but having driven it, and unless the open DBS is utterly unlike the closed car, then they are worlds apart. The Bentley is a true grand tourer, the DBS a proper supercar for those who like to feel the wind in what little may be left of their hair.

But it’s another open Aston I want to dwell upon today, because I think it’s perhaps one of the most underrated cars the company ever produced. It’s the open version of the DB2/4 MkIII built between 1957 and 1959. It comes from an era before the Volante name was first used in 1965 (on the ultra-rare Short Chassis Volante, a car that looks like an abbreviated DB6 not least because it sits on a DB5 chassis). Instead the car was properly called the MkIII Drophead Coupe, which I think is a wonderful name for such an elegantly styled car.

It was, if you like, the ultimate development of the Feltham Aston Martin and, as such, is a distinctly different proposition to those that were produced at Newport Pagnell thereafter. Smaller, lighter and more sporting, like all DB2-based cars the Mk III feels far more hand-built with greater attention to detail than the later cars. They were, in my view at least, also far better to drive.

But perhaps these cars are most notable for their scarcity: just 551 DB2/4 MkIII were made (don’t, whatever you do, call it a DB3 among the Aston Martin literati, though DB MkIII is acceptable), of which just 84 were Dropheads, which makes them very rare indeed.

I’ve driven two, both with the twin pipes and overdrive options that appear to be fitted to almost all MkIIIs these days, and with disc front brakes though, again, while early cars came with drums all round as standard, I’ve never seen one so equipped.

They are such a delight. Probably the best aspect of being an open MkIII is that the 3.0-litre twin-cam straight-six sounds even better than in the coupe. I wouldn’t say it’s any louder, but somehow slightly sweeter and more subtle, still with that gruff, racey edge that Tadek Marek’s superb six lacked in standard form in all those DBs that were to follow.

Also you lose almost nothing in terms of way the car drives for it being a convertible. Being based on a ladder chassis rather than a spaceframe, the body has no structural role to play, so it doesn’t shake like an over-excited puppy when you cut the roof off and it doesn’t need additional chassis reinforcement just to stop it wobbling. Which means there’s no great weight gain. It handles like a MkIII should handle, and should its owner be sneaky enough to slip a gentle limited slip differential between the rear wheels, even the car’s chief dynamic foible – a tendency to spin the inside rear tyre at the exit of slow corners, especially in the wet – can be neatly side-stepped without any discernible increase in understeer.

It is to be remembered that the first Aston Martin used by the world’s least secret agent was not a DB5 in the Goldfinger film, but a DB MkIII in the Goldfinger book, even if Ian Fleming committed the capital crime of calling it a DBIII. It is, to be honest, a much more suitable mode of transport for 007, far more exciting and rewarding than a DB5.

But would you have yours open or closed? That’s tough: I reckon the MkIII Drophead comes as close as any I know to being a convertible you might choose over a coupe and for purely recreational purposes it’s probably the better car. But for its proportions and unimprovable silhouette in profile, I’d probably still have the coupe. Just. But either would be a dream.

Photos courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.