James Bond Aston Martin DB5 - Autosport Enthusiast

James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 is likely one of the most recognizable cars in the world. You might not know it’s a DB5, you might not even know it’s an Aston Martin, but you know it’s the car James Bond drove.

The Aston Martin DB5 is a British grand tourer (GT) produced by Aston Martin and designed by Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera. Originally produced from 1963 to 1965, the DB5 was an evolution of the final series of DB4. The “DB” designation is from the initials of David Brown who built up the company from 1947 onwards.

Though two Silver Birch DB5s were used in the filming of Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965), Sean Connery only drove one, and that was DP/2161/1. The other two cars were built for the production company as promotional cars and traveled the world promoting the two movies.

The Road Car – Chassis Number DP/2161/1: UK License Plate BMT 216A

This car belonged to Aston Martin and was the DB5 prototype. It was actually a modified DB4. It was referred to as “the road car” because it was used in all of the driving scenes in the movies. It had registration BMT 216A (for the UK), 4711-EA-62 (France) and LU 6789 (Switzerland) arranged on a triangular pivot that fitted into a rectangular box attached to the front bumper. This allowed Bond to flip the plates and change his license plate number.

In 1968, Aston Martin stripped it of all of its gadgets and sold it to Gavin Keyzar as a used car displaying 50,000 miles on the odometer. It was re-registered with license plate 6633 PP. A year later, Keyzar had a company in the south of England reinstall all the gadgets to capitalize on the car’s history.

In 1971, Keyzar sold DP/2161/1 to Richard Loose of Utah. (It had a very brief appearance in the movie The Cannonball Run.) Loose retired in 1987 and decided to sell the DB5 at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. Anthony Pugliese, a developer from Florida, purchased the car for $275,000. A very reputable appraiser put a value of $4 million on the car and Grundy Insurance insured it for $3.2 million.

Aston Martin DB5 and Roger Moore in “The Cannonball Run”

In 1997, the car was stolen from an aircraft hangar in Boca Raton, Florida and the car has never been seen since.

According to Christopher A Marinello of Art Recovery International, the VIN number of a recently spotted Aston Martin DB5 is said to match the missing Bond car, and it is now believed that the car belongs to a private car collection somewhere in the Middle East.

The Gadget Car – Chassis Number DB5/1486/R: UK License Plate FMP 7B

This car also belonged to Aston Martin and was used in Goldfinger and Thunderball for all of the special effects.

All the gadgets were removed in 1968, and the car was sold to Jerry Lee in the U.S. for $12,000. When Lee went to England to view the car, he found it in poor condition. Aston Martin gave it a makeover before Lee took it back to the States.

DB5/1486/R was displayed at a few shows until it was damaged at a show in Memphis, Tennessee. Lee was angry and swore that the car would never be displayed again.

In 1977, the chairman of Aston Martin USA asked Lee if he would allow the car to be displayed at the New York Auto Show and told him that Aston Martin would pay for the gadgets to be reinstalled. The care was extremely popular and was displayed one more time in 1981. Afterwards, Lee placed it in a special wing of his house, and it was never publicly seen again. Lee decided to sell the car and use the proceeds of the sale to fund the Jerry Lee Foundation, which supports education and anti-crime projects internationally.

RM Auctions sold the car for $4.6 million on October 10th of 2010 to Harry Yeaggy, a well-known classic car collector from Cincinnati, Ohio. He still owns the car and generously displays it at concours events around the United States. This is the only surviving DB5 of the two cars actually used in the filming of the movies.

RM photo used to promote DB5/1486/R for the 2010 London auction

Publicity Car 1 – Chassis Number DB5/2017/R: Re-Issued UK License Plate BMT 216A

This car was one of two built for Eon Productions at the staggering cost of $62,000 each (when an original DB5 cost $11,250).

Eon sold DB5/2017/R and its twin, DB5/2008/R, to Anthony Bamford (now Lord Bamford) in 1969. Bamford purchased both cars for $3750 each.

One year later, Bamford’s friend Sandy Luscombe-Whyte asked Bamford to sell one of the cars to him. Luscombe-Whyte traded a 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO in a straight swap for the DB5.

After four months of having fun with it, Luscombe-Whyte advertised the car in The Times in London. Frank Baker of Vancouver, British Columbia, made him an offer he could not refuse: $21,600 and an all-expenses-paid trip aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 to New York. The car spent the next 13 years on display outside Baker’s Attic Restaurant in West Vancouver.

Frank Baker and Alf Spence posing with DB5/2017/R

In the early 1980’s, Baker sold the car to Alf Spence for $7000. After having the car completely restored, Spence sold it to a consortium headed by Ernest Hartz of San Francisco. The DB5 sold for $80,000.

The new owner was racecar driver Bob Bondurant. He sold it one year later to Robert Pass of Pass Transportation. Five months later, Pass sold it to Robert Littman. When Littman discovered DB5/2017/R was neither a car used in the movies nor the one driven by Sean Connery, he was very disappointed. It ended up in a Jaguar dealership in New Jersey.

In 1989 the dealership went into receivership. DB5/2017/R disappeared, only to surface in the Louwman Collection in the National Automobile Museum in Raamsdonksveer, Holland.

Publicity Car 2 – Chassis Number DB5/2008/R: UK License Plate YRE 186H

Lord Bamford kept the other car of the pair manufactured for Eon Productions until the news of the theft of “the road car” hit the press.

In 1971 Bamford sold the car to Bruce Atchley, the owner of the Smoky Mountain Car Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The car was installed inside an iron-barred cage and displayed from 1971 until 2006.

It was auctioned off on the 20th of January 2006, at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona and sold for $2.4 million.

Since entering the care of its current caretaker, it has been given a no-expense-spared restoration by Roos Engineering in Switzerland. After the four-year restoration, the car was the subject of a feature article on the Bond DB5 cars that was printed in the October 2012 issue of Motor.

In 2019 the car was sold at the RM Sotheby’s Monterey Auction for $6,385,000 (USD).

Goldeneye Aston Martin DB5

In 1995, the first James Bond film for six years, Goldeneye began dramatically with Pierce Brosnan driving a DB5 in a car chase with a Ferrari F355. A total of three cars were needed for filming, one in perfect condition for close-up and interior shots (DB5/2187/R), and two more used for stunt cars for the driving scenes in the Monte Carlo area (DB5/1484/R and DB5/1885/R).

Chassis DB5/2175/R – Was used for close-ups (in front of Monte Carlo casino) and interior shots. Currently at the Miami Auto Museum at the Dezer collection, registration JB Z6 007. Distinguished by the four screws in the headlamp bezels (instead of one in other cars).

Chassis DB5/1484/R – Stunt car, bought in poor condition and fixed up for filming by Stratton Motor Company, Norwich. It failed to be sold at Coys auction on March 21, 1994. Its current owner is not known.

Chassis DB5/1885/R – Original registration FBH 281 C, Re-registered as BMT 214 A. This stunt car was bought in poor condition and fixed up for filming by Stratton Motor Company, Norwich. It was sold to Max Reid at an auction by Christie’s, South Kensington, on February 14, 2001, for £157,750.

This car (DB5/1885/R) was used to promote the movie after filming had finished, following a final rebuild that “included removing the body from the chassis and refurbishing it with a new nose section, new tail section and new door skins, which was followed by a full repaint in the current livery. It is understood that Stratton also carried out considerable mechanical refurbishment at this time. In 1996, ‘1885/R’ was sold to the immediately preceding owner, Peter Nelson, proprietor of the ‘Cars Of The Stars’ exhibition in Cumbria. When purchased at a Bond themed auction by the current owner in February 2001, this DB5 became the most valuable piece of Bond memorabilia ever sold and subsequently was recorded as such in the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’. As a true James Bond DB5 it has brought with it unique experiences for the current custodian and his family, including attending Bond Premieres / after-show parties and even playing extras in the Spectre movie.

The DB5 has been well looked after, receiving occasional leisure use with service work provided by Aston Martin Works, RS Williams and Stratton Motor Company. The car featured in Chris Evans’ Famous Five and Magnificent Seven car collection for BBC’s Children In Need 2013 Appeal and has been on display as the star exhibit at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, as well as the key attraction of the ‘Bond in Motion’ exhibition at London’s Covent Garden. This car was sold at the Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed Sale on July 13, 2018, for £1,961,500 (€ 2,180,898). The estimate was £1,200,000-1,600,000.

One of the above cars was used for a brief scene in “Tomorrow Never Dies”.

Special Features:

Digital communications device and fax machine – built into CD player
Bollinger champagne bottle cooler – stashed in center armrest

Casino Royale Aston Martin DB5

In Casino Royale (2006), the Aston Martin DB5 makes an appearance when Daniel Craig, portraying James Bond, wins the car in a high-stakes poker game. Initially owned by villain Alex Dimitrios in the Bahamas, this DB5 is devoid of any special modifications or gadgets since it was not a government issued car.

Skyfall Aston Martin DB5

In Skyfall (2012) James Bond recovers his classic DB5 – with number plate BMT 216A – from his London lock-up and drives up to his ancestral home with M, his finger at one point hovering over the ejector seat button. It’s back in full-throated action during the final showdown in Scotland, where the front-mounted machine guns are used to lethal effect. The DB5 is shot to pieces by Silva’s helicopter but is recovered and restored in Q’s lab in 2015’s Specter, before Bond and Madeleine Swann exit London in the car at the film’s conclusion.

There is contradictory information on this one:

a) Chassis DB5/1484/R (one of the GE cars). Original registration AJU 519 B
b) Aston Martin Works transformed it from a green car (Chassis DB5/2007/R, original registration COJ 483C) with beige interior to Silver Birch with black trimming (from a customer whose car was waiting to be restored in the shop). The roof hatchline was painted on. Was displayed at the Beaulieu Motor Museum in November 2012 with its original registration → current owner not known.

No Time To Die Aston Martin DB5

The DB5 enjoys a starring role in 2021’s No Time To Die where it has its biggest action sequence since its 1964 debut. Bond and Madeleine drive along the Italian coast in his DB5, with the number plate A 4289 00. A short while later, the car takes to the streets of Matera and comes under attack. Bond guides the DB5 through the ancient city’s winding streets, unloading a batch of cluster of mini mines from the car’s rear. With assassins still clinging to their tail, Bond then powers the DB5 down a flight of steps before grazing it on a wall as he slips through a narrow alley. Just as he thinks he may have shaken his pursuers, an SUV smashes into his side, spinning the car into the middle of a piazza. Villains surround the car and pepper the DB5 with machine gun fire. Bond and Madeleine are protected by bullet-proof panels and glass, and when it seems that the glass might shatter, Bond flicks a switch on the car’s center console, which drops the front headlamps to reveal a brace of mini-guns. He unleashes a hail of bullets while spinning the car in a 360-degree circle. As the enemy scatter, he then releases a smoke screen from the exhaust and makes a swift escape before ditching the car at the railway station.

In No Time To Die ,10 Aston Martin DB5s were used; 2 actual DB5 models and 8 replicas. The replicas of these classic 1960s Aston Martin James Bond cars were enhanced with 6-cylinder engines with more than 380 hp, as well as a carbon fiber chassis, roll cages, limited-rear slip differentials, the latest safety systems, and more to ensure stunt drivers had the performance and security to pull off some of the best chase scenes in film history. Our favorite No Time to Die Aston Martin DB5 moment is when Bond, in DB5, is pursued through the ancient Italian city of Matera by two mysterious Jaguar sedans. When he’s cornered by dozens of grunts, the machine-gun barrels emerge from the DB5’s headlights, and James makes swift work of the villains with a few sharp donuts!

So how much is a piece of automotive and silver screen history worth? An Aston Martin DB5 stunt car used in the film ended up selling for approximately $3.1 million USD in September 2022 at a Christie’s charity auction.

Special Features:

Twin M134 rotary mini-guns – hidden behind headlamps and operated by F/Gun switch in center console (shells ejected through side vents)
• Rear smoke screen – initiated with sliding lever in center console and fired from exhaust system
• Mini mine dispenser – deployed via a compartment under the boot
• Bulletproof chassis and glass
• Digital revolving number plates – with three numbers and only seen in deleted scene

The Gadget Car – DB5/1486/R – Goldfinger Gadgets

Though John Stears’ revolutionary Oscar-winning work on the original Star Wars movie of 1977 was yet more than a decade away, his ingenuity was already evident in the modifications that he made for the special-effects Aston Martin.

As Desmond Llewelyn’s legendary weapons-master Q would go on to explain to Sean Connery’s 007, the Snow Shadow Gray–painted DB5 was equipped with front and rear hydraulic over-rider rams on the bumpers, a Browning .30-caliber machine gun in each fender, wheel-hub-mounted tire slashers, a retractable rear bulletproof screen, an in-dash radar-tracking scope, oil-slick, caltrop, and smoke-screen dispensers, revolving license plates, and a passenger-seat ejection system.

Also equipped, although never used during the film, was a telephone in the driver’s door to communicate with MI6 headquarters, as well as a hidden compartment under the driver’s seat containing several weapons.