Sunday, February 10, 2008 – Bond, James Bond

Okay, this is Hollywood and one should expect such things, but on a quiet Saturday morning there was James Bond's car, the steel gray 1963 Aston Martin DB5, parked in the lot on the south side of Sunset Plaza – the heart of the Sunset Strip. You remember this car from Goldfinger (1964) – the car used in the film was the original prototype, with another standard car used for stunts.  This one on Sunset Boulevard even had the 007 European plates.  Was Bond around somewhere?

Trivia - the DB5 was used again in the next film, Thunderball, a different one used in the 1995 film GoldenEye (three different cars were used for filming), another was used in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and a DB5 was set to make a cameo in The World Is Not Enough (1999), but the scene was cut.  Yet another DB5 appeared in Casino Royale (2006), this one with the steering wheel on the left side, unlike the previous British versions.  As you see from the photos, this must be that one.

It's not the Goldfinger car – no front-firing Browning .30 caliber machine guns behind the front indicators, no retractable blades in the tire spinners, no passenger ejector seat, no oil slick spray from rear light cluster, no smoke screen device from exhaust pipes – but then you never know, as all that was hidden.  On the other hand the first DB5 prototype used in Goldfinger was later stripped of its weaponry and gadgetry by Aston Martin and then resold – and then stolen in 1997 from its last owner in Florida and is currently still missing. It's out there somewhere.

This one will do.  By the way, Sean Connery, the original Bond, has a home, one of them, a few miles west in Century City.  It is possible… no, probably not.

It's very British - the UK recommended list price of the sports saloon (coupe) in December 1963 was £4,248 including Purchase Tax. But it's not that British – the body design was by Federico Formenti of Carozziera Touring, Milano, and the engine – a 4.0 liter Tadek Marek inline six – was design by a Pole, Tadek Marek of course.  

Superleggera, also called tube-frame, is an automobile construction technology used in classic sports cars from the middle of the 20th Century. The name means "super light" in Italian, and was coined in 1937 by the Italian coachbuilder, Carrozzeria Touring. Unlike the monocoque and body-on-frame methods widely adopted by the fifties, superleggera cars use a network of thin metal tubes as a full-body frame. These are then covered with metal body panels, often made of exotic lightweight materials like aluminum or magnesium alloys. This construction technique is no longer used in volume production cars today, but is still found in low-volume and hand-built sports models.

If, as a close reading of the novels shows, James Bond was born on 11 November 1920, he would be in his late eighties now – thus the handicapped tag in the window, allowing him to park this thing anywhere he'd like.

If you wish to use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me. And should you choose to download any of these images and use them invoking the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, please provide credit, and, on the web, a link back this site.

Technical Note:

Most of these photographs were shot with a Nikon D70 - using lens (1) AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or (2) AF Nikkor 70-300mm telephoto, or after 5 June 2006, (3) AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor, 55-200 mm f/4-5.6G ED. They were modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0.  Earlier photography was done with a Sony Mavica digital still camera (MVC-FD-88) with built-in digital zoom.

All text and photos, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik