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Sean Connery reclines against the DB5 during the filming of Goldfinger.
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Bond had already made Connery a star, but now it would do the same for Aston Martin’s DB5.
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The DB5 appeared in several more Bond films. Here, 007 returns to his car via jetpack in Thunderball.
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Bond eschewed the Aston Martin for a while, but he returned to a DB5 in Goldeneye, despite this film marking the start of a multi-film contract to use BMWs.
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A DB5 turned up again in Tomorrow Never Dies. No, I didn’t remember that either, but then it was not a good Bond film.
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007’s own personal car, sans gadgets, got properly shot up in Skyfall.
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That car was restored for 007 in time for Spectre.
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Few cars are quite as legendary as the Aston Martin DB5. It’s not because they sold well—just over a thousand were built between 1963 and 1965. And it’s not because they won famous races. Instead, the DB5 became such an icon thanks to an early example of product placement, because it’s the car that James Bond drove in the film Goldfinger. And now, Aston Martin has said it’s going to build 25 of them, complete with gadgets. But they won’t be cheap—each will cost $3.51 million (£2.75 million) plus tax.
In the film, 007’s car was modified by Q Branch and equipped with revolving number plates, machine guns, an oil slick dispenser, and even an ejector seat. In reality, the car used in the film—actually one of Aston Martin’s pre-production prototypes—was modified by John Stears, who won an Oscar for his work. No one knew at the time quite how much the DB5 would steal the show, and after the film the gadgets were removed from the car and then reinstalled some years later.
Sadly, DP216/1 (as it was known) was stolen from a hangar in Florida in 1997, although several other DB5s used for promotional work that weren’t fitted with gadgets are still around. As you might expect, these have multimillion-dollar valuations. And so do the new cars, which will have at least some of 007’s toys added; Aston Martin’s press release explicitly mentions revolving license plates at a minimum.
You might be wondering how that’s legal, and the answer is that it’s not. The same release also includes a note to let us know that the continuation cars will unfortunately not be road legal, putting them in the company of other multimillion-dollar cars that you can’t take to the drive-thru.
Continuation cars like these are becoming more common; we brought you news of Jaguar’s plans to build some new D-Types back in February, and it has also churned out some fresh E-Types and XKSSes. But Aston Martin arguably started the trend several decades ago. In 1987 it decided to build a handful of new DB4 GT Zagatos, quite possibly the most beautiful car of all time. More recently, it built a new run of DB4 GTs (one of which featured on The Grand Tour), which were also not road-legal, just like these new DB5s.
