‘Non! Non! There is a huge Tiger tank on the other side of the bridge!’ shouts the Frenchman clutching a rifle, as he crouches on the side of an advancing Churchill. ‘Wow! Then I’m getting out of the way!’ yells back the British tank commander.
A Jeep pulls up and a British Major calls out to the tankie: ‘What’s up, chum? Had a breakdown?’ On being told about the hidden Tiger, he organises a daring raid to outflank the Germans without being seen. The Major and his companions discover that the Tiger is, in fact, an artillery piece on the back of a truck hidden in some trees, but they successfully round up the Jerries – only to get nearly blown up themselves when the Churchill looses off a round.
The story reads like a comic strip because it’s exactly that, run across the front and back covers of boys’ adventure paper The Victor, 13 November 1971 issue. But it’s based on a real event. The Major in question was Robert William Fenton ‘Tony’ Mellor, and he owned the Aston Martin you see here. Except that neither the car nor Major Mellor himself were quite what they seemed.
In the 1990s the Aston was restored to its current short-chassis Ulster specification, but it started life as a regular long-chassis MkII. It was owned by Major Mellor for half a century
