James Bond Aston DB5
The Aston Martin DB5 is the first car seen in the James Bond movies, and will forever be known as the original and Iconic bond car. This is despite the fact the in the James Bond Novels, the author Ian Flemming wrote bond as owning a grey 1930′s Bentley convertible, owned by Bond himself and never modified by Q division.
Aston’s offering of a free DB5 for the movie (whereas Bentley wanted to charge for their car) cemented it’s place in history well before product placement in movies was heard of, and is estimated to be worth millions to the brand and is the reason that BMW offered so much to replace Aston Martin as Bonds car of choice for movies in the 1990′s.
The DB5 features in 5 separate Bond films: Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and Casino Royale. In the latter film a new explanation is given as to just how Bond gets the car by winning it in a game of poker.
The Aston DB5 has gadgets differing for each movie, but perhaps the best known use of the car was in Goldfinger, where the car was fitted with pop out gun barrels behind the front indicator lights, a bullet shield behind the rear window and a 3 way revolving number plate.
One of the promotional cars used during the movie launch was bought for £5000 from the owner, and was sold at auction in 2006 for $2,090,000.
The production car used a 4.0 litre engine producing 282 horsepower.