Aston Martin DB5 News

Appearing in six James Bond films including Bond's latest outing 'Skyfall', the DB5 has left an indelible mark on popular culture. The timeless 'DB' bloodline extends into the contemporary Aston Martin model range with the 'DB9' the latest iteration of this automotive legacy.

When it comes to used dream cars, the Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III takes the cake.

Both are up for auction at the Automobiles of London sale in London on October 27.  The most famous is the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 that starred in the James Bond epic Goldfinger in 1964, the third instalment from the 007 series. It was so popular it returned for Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and Casino Royale. It featured revolving number plates, Browning machine guns, extending bumper overriders for ramming baddies, a smoke screen, an oil slick and nail spreaders, plus the infamous Martin-Baker fighter jet ejector seat, triggered by the little red button under the gear lever knob.  All these features remain on the car driven in the films by the first Bond, Sean Connery.  There is no estimate of its fetching price at auction.  The second Bond was Roger Moore who never drove an Aston Martin. Instead, he drove a Bentley, a Chevy Implala convertible and most famously an amphibious Lotus Esprit. In his Saint TV series, Moore as Simon Templar made the Volvo P1800 famous.  But the Moore car up for auction is a 1969 Lamborghini Islero GTS he drove in the obscure 1970 thriller, The Man Who Haunted Himself, Moore drives which will be auctioned The movie features Moore as a man who awakes from surgery after a car accident to find his life has been turned upside-down. He is frequently seen driving the rare Lamborghini Islero GTS in the movie, including a climatic chase scene.  Sir Roger Moore was recently reunited with the Islero in London where he autographed the sun visor, the original driver's handbook and a special plaque. Finished in silver and carrying the original movie registration number YRL 11G, this Islero is one of only five right-hand variants built.  The car is estimated to achieve between $154,000 and $220,000 at the auction.

The silver 1964 DB5 used in the Bond movies Goldfinger and Thunderball goes under the gavel in London in October. It is expected to fetch more than $5 million.  The Aston is one of only two cars left from the original 007 DB5s driven by Sean Connery in the two Bond movies. It even has its original UK registration number, FMP 7B. The DB5 has has travelled about 48,000km and has rarely been seen in public since it was bought in 1969 by American radio broadcaster and philanthropist Jerry Lee. Lee paid $US12,000 for the purpose-built movie car. "The James Bond car has brought me much enjoyment for some 40 years," Lee says. Lee will use the auction funds to help the Jerry Lee Foundation, a charity aimed at solving social problems associated with poverty. The Bond car comes with a full complement of accessories, including machine guns, bullet-proof shield, revolving number plates, tracking device, removable roof panel, oil slick sprayer, nail spreader and smoke screen, all controlled from factory installed toggles and switches hidden in the centre arm-rest. The DB5 was originally loaned to EON Productions for the Bond films and returned to the Aston Martin Lagonda factory after a promotional tour. It is described as being in original condition and has recently been overhauled to returning it to running condition. The managing director of RM Auctions in the UK, Max Girardo, says the Aston is one of the world's most significant collector cars.

Was it "Big Bopper" - the '79 XB Falcon from Mad Max, or Steve McQueen's '68 Mustang GT in Bullitt. Or could it be the '64 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Bond in Goldfinger. How about the Mini Coopers of 1969 in the Italian Job? Or, does the '77 Pontiac Trans Am from Smokey and The Bandit top your list?Take our poll below to tell us what you think, or leave a comment if your top pick is not listed.But if the Oscars gave out awards to cars instead of stars, Audi would probably get the most nominations. During the past few years, Audis have featured in all the Transporter movies, Ronin, I Robot, Mission Impossible 2, About a Boy, Legally Blonde 2, Hitman, The Matrix 2, Iron Man and now its sequel.In the first Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr plays Tony Stark (a.k.a 'Iron Man'). His workshop houses a 1932 Ford Flathead roadster, a 1967 Shelby Cobra, a Saleen S7, a prototype Tesla Roadster and a 2008 Audi R8.Supporting roles were played by the S5 sports sedan driven by American secret service agents and a Q7 SUV which is literally held up by Iron Man, who saves the family inside from the enemy. For the Australian premiere, Downey Jr arrived in a silver R8. In Iron Man 2 he drives an Audi R8 Spyder and his secretary, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), drives an A8 TDI.Audi Australia corporate communications general manager Anna Burgdorf could not confirm whether any payment was made for the placement. However, she could confirm that the super-sport R8 V10 Spyder will arrive here towards the end of the year.The R8 Spyder 5.2 FSI quattro features a lightweight-cloth top that opens automatically in about 19 seconds. Its V10 engine produces 386kW of power and launches the open-top two-seater to 100km/h in 4.1 seconds on its way to a top speed of 313km/h.Product placement of cars is not new to the sliver screen. Most critics believe it started with Bond films, notably the Aston Martin DB5 in Goldfinger, in 1964. Aston returned in 1965 for Thunderball and was replaced by the DBS for 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.Other companies then got into the act of pushing their vehicles on to the Bond screen with the highlights being the amphibious Lotus Esprit in The Spy Who Loved Me and the launch of the BMW Z3 Roadster in GoldenEye. Even a pre-production Aston Martin DBS scored a role in Casino Royale, and scored a Guinness record for "the most cannon rolls in a car at the same time" - seven - for its very brief appearance.Iron Man 2 begins screening in Australia on April 29.

When the credits run on the forthcoming James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, there'll be a disclaimer that no animals were hurt during production.You won't see this, having left by that point for the carpark, but it's always there.As you climb into what is almost certainly a far humbler form of transport than those you've just seen on the screen, you might wonder at the lack of a Royal Society for Protection of Cruelty to Automobiles.As can be seen from these exclusive images of the sequel to Casino Royale — the flick that rebooted and imbued the flaccid Bond franchise with balls — Automobile Rights protestors would be outraged.Evidently not content with establishing a Guiness Book record for achieving seven barrel roles in Casino Royale, seven of the sumptuous DBSs were variously brutalised for the chase sequence near curtain up on Quantum.This is set an hour after the closing shot of Casino in which Daniel Craig's Bond stands — silenced Heckler & Koch smoking in his hand — over the writhing form of Mr White, who he has kneecapped by way of introducing himself as “Bond, James Bond”.Stunt coordinator Gary Powell, the third generation of the legendary English clan who have taken the falls and rolled with the punches on every Bond flick since Dr No, has said he set out to top his Casino rollout.“We have stiffened the suspension and pushed the wheels out at an angle and used special tyres for each surface. We take all the traction control off the cars so when we want to do a big wheeslpin, the car will allow you to do it.“That way the stuntman controls the car rather than the car controlling the stuntmen. We have put in a hydraulic handbrake in the Aston Martins so the stuntman can skid the car round corners. It's fitted between the driver and the door so that it's easy to reach for without looking down.”Someone must have done so at some point, though, one Aston plunging contrary to direction into northern Italy's usually placcid and postcard perfect Lake Garda. In addition to the scripted carnage visited upon a clutch of Alfa Romeo 159s, another had an “accidental” accident.While Quantum of Solace's director is Marc Forster, it was Dan Bradley who spent two months with the second unit shooting the sequence near Garda — a favourite setting for European car makers with products to launch.“I love the bit where Bond loses the driver's door of the Aston Martin,” says Bradley, seemingly oblivious to the wails of auto eroticists.“Now it's like, every car that comes past him, every shot that is fired at him, the potential for Bond's (survival) withers. I love what it gives us in terms of storytelling and the threat to Bond.”With Bondophiles buzzing that the new film will see a return of the gadgetry that was notable by its absence in Casino, this is one refreshingly unsophisticated touch. Whereas Sean Connery's original 1964 Aston Martin DB5 was stuffed with then hi-tech optional extras including retractable machine guns, Craig fires his H&K at the pursuing Alfas through the gaping doorframe.If somehow we've forgotten that Bond is fiction, albeit boy's own stuff of the highest order, the last sentence is a salient reminder. Alfas harrying an Aston?While the Fiat group have not revealed what involvement in the franchise currently dominated by Ford and its subsidiary Premier Auto Group cost, the mere association as the villains ride of choice can hardly hurt flagging sales of the 159.Those in question are the 159Ti 3.2 JTS V6 Q4, the topline edition of the sedan which sells locally from $76,990, a snip compared to the $466,600 pricetag on the DBS. Actually, we'd recommend the visually almost identical 2.2 JTS from $54,990.And if you're looking for a still more affordable bit of Bondage, Ford's micro Ka is to make a cameo appearance, just as the current Mondeo was first seen by the world in Casino Royale.Of course, soon after being seen in this placed product, the then-new Bond actor acquires an example of the iconic DB5 in a card game, a symbol of Craig taking the 007 mantle.This and the bravado opening of Quantum remind us that for all the girls, guns and gratuitous quips, the car remains a central motif of this longest running movie franchise.Quantum of Solace is released in November. The new trailer can be seen at www.007.com/ 

Michael Schumacher retired with seven world championships, but 007 is up to 21 movies — with six different macho men in the role — and still going hard.During the past quarter-century and in 21 official films, Bond has been the target of more bad guys on wheels than anyone else in cinema history, yet he has always managed to escape without a scratch.And he has often pulled a nifty U-turn on the opposition with some sort of car trickery, from concealed machine guns on a 1960s Aston Martin to an '80s Lotus Esprit that morphed into a submarine — and even a remote-controlled BMW 7 Series in the '90s.Now he's back for the noughties, and doing it again in the remake of Casino Royale, which opened in cinemas just before Christmas. And he's back in an Aston Martin, just like the early days.The hype for the new 007 movie got me thinking not only about Bond's wheelwork in the latest British supercar, but also the dream car of my childhood: a scale model of the Aston Martin DB5 Bond drove in the 1960s.It came with all the Bond gear — revolving number plates, concealed machine guns, tyre-slashers, a bulletproof rear shield and even an ejector seat.In 1965, Corgi released its scale model of the gadget-laden DB5, and by 1968 nearly four million copies had been sold.It remains Corgi's best-known model, and I couldn't afford it.The release of the 21st-century Casino Royale has triggered a lot of talk about 007 and cars and movies.The model-making machine is already rolling again, with scaled-down copies of the DBS and even re-done — but de-gadgeted — replicas of the original DB5. And this time, there was a tiny Aston in my Christmas stocking.It's worth looking at what Bond cameos have done for car companies.BMW experienced plenty of benefit when it signed a multi-movie deal that began with its baby Z3 convertible. The world saw the car first when it was driven on the big screen by Bond. That deal continued with the Z8 convertible and the controversially styled 7, and even a BMW motorcycle.But then Britain bounced back for the last of Pierce Brosnan's appearances as Bond, when he slid back into an Aston and the baddies strapped into a rocket-equipped Jaguar.This time around, Agent 007 is driving a gorgeous new DBS, and there's even a special appearance by an original DB5.A poll has been conducted for the television series Top Gear on the most popular car chase in Bond movie history. And the winner is ... no, not the Aston. Not a Jaguar, nor the Lotus, nor even one of the BMWs.First choice was a crazy little Citroen 2CV that suffered all sorts of punishment — including being cut in half — when it was driven by Roger Moore in the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only. The four-wheeled co-stars:Dr No (1962): Sunbeam Alpine, Chevrolet Bel AirconvertibleFrom Russia With Love (1963): Bentley Mark IVGoldfinger (1964): Aston Martin DB5, Rolls-Royce, Mercedes 190SL, Lincoln Continental, Ford Mustang convertible, Rolls-Royce Phantom IIIThunderball (1965): Aston Martin DB5, Ford Mustang convertible, BSA Lightning motorcycle, gyrocopter1967 You Only Live Twice: Toyota 2000 GT, BMW CSOn Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): Aston Martin DBS, Mercury Cougar, Bentley S2 Continental, Rolls-Royce CornicheDiamonds Are Forever (1971): Ford Mustang Mach 1, Triumph Stag, moon buggyLive And Let Die (1973): double-decker London bus, Chevrolet Impala convertible, MiniMokeThe Man With The Golden Gun (1974): AMC Hornet and Matador, Rolls-Royce Silver ShadowThe Spy Who Loved Me (1977): Lotus Esprit, Wetbike concept, Ford Cortina Ghia, Mini MokeMoonraker (1979): Bentley Mark IV, Rolls-Royce SilverWraithFor Your Eyes Only (1981): Citroen 2CV, Lotus Esprit Turbo, Rolls-Royce Silver WraithOctopussy (1983): Mercedes-Benz 250 SE, BMW 5 Series, Alfa Romeo GTVA View To A Kill (1985): Renault taxi, Ford LTD, Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II, Chevrolet Corvette C4The Living Daylights (1987): Aston Martin DBS and V8 Vantage, Audi 200 QuattroLicence To Kill (1989): Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, Kenworth petrol tankerGoldenEye (1995): BMW Z3, Aston Martin DB5, Russian tank, Ferrari 355Tomorrow Never Dies (1997): Aston Martin DB5, BMW 750iL, BMW R1200C motorcycleThe World Is Not Enough (1999): BMW Z8, Rolls-Royce Silver ShadowDie Another Day (2002): Aston Martin Vanquish, Jaguar XKR, Ford Thunderbird convertibleCasino Royale (2006): Aston Martin DBS and DB5, Jaguar E-type roadster, Fiat Panda 4x4, Ford Transit, Ford Mondeo