Morgan Creek Co-Founder's Aston Martin V8 Volante, Kept 46 Years, Is Live on Bring a Trailer

James G. Robinson kept cars far longer than he drove them. One of his, a 1979 Aston Martin V8 Volante with about 18,000 miles on the clock, is live on Bring a Trailer through Friday, October 23, at 2:18 p.m. ET. The seller is offering it on behalf of Robinson's estate, and the high bid stood at $45,250 on Tuesday morning.

Robinson died February 15 at age 90, according to Deadline. He co-founded Morgan Creek Productions in 1988, the studio behind Major League, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Last of the Mohicans. What makes this Aston more than a nice old convertible is where he came from. An early-1990s Time profile says his first business was a bankrupt Baltimore company that stripped protective wax off imported cars, started with about $40,000 he'd saved as a still photographer. He later bought and expanded a Subaru distributorship, sold it in 1987, and put roughly $80 million of his own money into the studio.

In other words, a man who spent his early career handling other people's imported cars ended up with a collection of his own. The seller says it numbered well over 140 vehicles, stored in a 56,000-square-foot facility near the Port of Baltimore with service bays and a paint shop, and that more than 60 of them will be offered on Bring a Trailer. Those numbers come from the seller, not an independent count. The location is at least plausible: a 2006 Daily Record report describes Robinson's import-processing business at Baltimore's Dundalk Marine Terminal, and the Volante is listed in Dundalk.

The Car

Aston Martin introduced the Volante in June 1978, and Wikipedia's V8 history counts 656 Series 1 cars. This one, chassis V8C0L15073, is a US-market example with the big 5-mph bumpers. Under the hood is Tadek Marek's 5.3-liter DOHC V8 with four Weber downdraft carburetors, rated at 310 horsepower at the factory, feeding the rear wheels through a three-speed Chrysler TorqueFlite automatic and a limited-slip differential. Inside are tan leather, burl wood and Koolaire air conditioning, under a power-operated tan soft top.

The listing says Robinson bought it from a Chicago dealer in 1980 and includes the 1980 purchase documentation. The seller says it had 7,613 miles at the time. It shows 18k today, and the listing puts about 10k of those miles on Robinson's watch, which works out to a little over 200 miles a year. The car is titled in Montana in the name of the late owner's LLC.

The seller tells a good story in a comment on the listing. According to the seller, Robinson went to the dealership on July 10, 1980, to collect a 1978 Rolls-Royce Corniche he had agreed to buy about three weeks earlier, spotted the Aston instead, and the dealer crossed out the Rolls on the contract. The seller says the original sales order shows it. We haven't seen that document, so treat it as the seller's account for now.

What to Know Before Bidding

This is a well-kept car, not a flawless one. The burgundy metallic paint is a repaint done after 2004, and the seller says Robinson's in-house team did it in the collection's paint booth with extra metallic flake. The listing flags chips, scrapes and other imperfections, plus rust on various underside components. The wheels, round headlights and Magnaflow exhaust finishers are aftermarket, and an MSD unit has replaced the factory Lucas ignition coil. The seller says the collection's mechanics cleaned the carburetors, flushed the fuel system and recharged the air conditioning before the sale, and that inspections are available near the Port of Baltimore by appointment.

The seller also says a 1976 Jensen Interceptor convertible from the same collection wrapped up its auction earlier this week, so more Robinson cars are on the way. If you like your British grand tourers with some history attached, this has been a busy week for them: the one-of-two Frua-bodied Rolls-Royce Phantom VI is on the block the same day, and we recently looked at a 600-mile V8 Vantage Zagato that woke up after 40 years and Elton John's V8 Vantage V550.

Would you pay extra for a Hollywood studio founder's long-kept Volante, or does the repaint, the aftermarket bits and the underbody rust make you walk away?

Photos and listing details: Bring a Trailer.