To many, 1964’s “Goldfinger” is arguably the greatest of all the James Bond films, but for car enthusiasts, it isn’t the performance of Sean Connery as 007 that excites the most but rather the set of wheels he drives: an Aston Martin DB5.
Last year, Aston Martin started building a run of new DB5s built to the same spec as the Goldfinger movie car, using many of the same production techniques and even some of the same suppliers used for the original DB5s built back in the 1960s. Oh, and Aston Martin also added many of the same spy gadgets that featured on the movie car.
Aston Martin plans to build 28 of the Goldfinger-spec DB5s, and one of them was recently sampled by Jay Leno for the latest episode of his online series, “Jay Leno’s Garage.” We learn some interesting tidbits from the episode, such as the DB5’s famous Silver Birch paint actually featuring only because the producers wanted a gray car, which was the color mentioned in Ian Fleming’s original James Bond books.
For the spy gadgets, Aston Martin worked closely with EON Productions, the production company behind the James Bond movie franchise, as well as Oscar-winning special effects honcho Chris Corbould, who’s been involved with 14 of the movies. The gadgets include items like a revolving number plate, rear smoke screen, oil slick delivery system, battering rams, and simulated machine guns in action.
Of the 28 examples being built, only 25 build slots were offered to the public. Aston Martin charged a price of 2.75 million British pounds (approximately $3.8 million), and apparently all build slots are gone. A further two examples will be retained by Aston Martin and EON Productions for their respective collections and the final car will be auctioned off for charity. We should point out that owners won’t be able to drive the cars on the street as they haven’t undergone certification, which is why Leno is seen driving on a special set of roads normally used for testing self-driving cars.
In case you were wondering, there were two original DB5s used during filming of Goldfinger. One was sold at auction in 2010 for $4.1 million. The other was stolen from an owner in Florida in 1997 and rumored to be somewhere in the Middle East.
This article was originally published by Motor Authority, an editorial partner of ClassicCars.com.
Visit past stories from Jay Leno’s Garage on ClassicCars.com.
