Paul Banham and his company, Banham Conversions (Banmoco) became well known for his cabriolet conversions on Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Daimler and Jaguar cars. The company also went on to offer interior kits, styling kits and kit-cars and were perhaps most noted for their stylish XJSS conversion on the Jaguar XJ-S. Sadly the company went out of buisness in 2004.

The car above was sold during the Brooks/AML auction, May 2000, for a fraction of the cost of a real Volante at £12765 including commission. At that time, the congnisenti would look down disapprovingly at such a car although the Banham conversions might be gaining some acceptance over time.

Below is a later car based on a series 3 V8. Don’t be fooled by the Vantage bonnet and front air dam, the boot lid shows the cars origin as no real Volante had a boot lid quite like this.

I’m afraid that I have no idea as to the number of V8’s converted, but somewhere between 10 and 20 is my best estimate. Oddly, I did see a series 4 Oscar India based convertible by Banham for sale on the web which is odd as the Volante was already on sale when that particular car was converted.

Below there is a particular image from an advertisement for Specialised Engineering Ltd, London, in an issue of the AMOC magazine, Aston Martin Quarterly, Autumn 1973. The add states that a very limited number of these cars were scheduled to be built in 1973/4 but I don’t know if any were actually built, I suspect not. From this artists impression, it looks like perhaps it was intended to be a targa – something similar to the Triumph TR4A. Interesting concept nonetheless.