James Bond’s Aston Martin Db5 Expected To Fetch $8 Million

August 27th, 2010

Can you scrape together enough money to attend this auction?
The 1963 Aston Martin DB5 was an improved DB4. The DB5 is famous for being the first and most recognized cinematic James Bond car. It has been featured in several films, most notably Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Casino Royale.

The world’s most recognizable car
This has to be one of the most famous and maybe the best known car in the world – the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in the movies ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Thunderball’. And on October 27, in an auction room in London, it is expected to sell for anywhere up to $8 million. At the time of the making of the movies, two standard Aston Martins were modified for Goldfinger with what “Q” would have described as “all the usual refinements”: pop-up machine guns, tire shredders, bullet-proof screen, revolving number plates and ejector seat. But this one – FMP 7B – is the only survivor.

History
American DJ and radio-station owner Jerry Lee bought the car from Aston Martin in 1969 for a bargain $12,000. He has owned the car ever since and has only shown it twice in public since 1977. It has spent most of its life on display in his house and has never been restored. So it’s reassuringly tatty. The grey leather seats graced by the young Connery are worn to a beautiful patina, and the long, heavy tire shredder – which doesn’t pop out, but needs to be attached by hand, lies casually tossed in the back, along with the big hammer needed to fix it in place. Knowing its next owner will want to drive it, the auctioneer has given the mechanics and the gadgets a makeover.

It goes
So the 210kW, four-liter straight-six motor starts instantly, makes a hard, loud howl when worked and provides acceleration that still feels fairly urgent even by modern standards. As you drive, your thumb keeps flipping up the lid that covers the ejector seat trigger in the gear knob; fortunately for your passenger, it’s one of the few gadgets that doesn’t work. The phone hidden in the door won’t get you through to M, but the “radar scanner” hidden behind a
The secret panel hidden in the armrest controls the good stuff. The switches marked “oil”, “nails” and “smoke” don’t do what they promise, but “m-gun” really does make the front machine guns poke out, “bullet-screen” erects the rear shield and the rotary switch marked S, B and F rotates the Swiss, British and French plates. It’s these details that mean this car could sell for more than 30 times what you’d pay for a standard DB5.

Bumpers
Is it worth it all this money? Watch the reaction of other road users when you extend the ramming bumpers in traffic and $8 million will feel like a bargain.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 2:49 am and is filed under Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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