The Aston Martin DB5/2008/R outside the Biltmore Resort in Phoenix, Ariz., where it was sold at auction to a Swiss buyer for $2.4 million US last month. With story by Nigel Matthews for CanWest Auto Package.
Photograph by : Nigel Matthews/Special to the Vancouver Province

It is reckoned that half of the world’s population would recognize a James Bond Aston Martin DB5.
Not sure how that was figured out, but it is hard to argue with that assertion. Author David Worrell likely hit
the nail on the head when he entitled a book about the fictional spy’s car The most famous car in the world.

Following Aston Martin’s recent press release confirming that Bond will drive a specially built DBS

model in Casino Royale, MI6 revealed that 007 would also return to an old friend in the new film. Two original DB5s will be shipped to the Bahamas, where location shooting with Daniel Craig is expected to begin next month.

Just about every owner of a silver Aston Martin DB5 has either wished or has told a whopper claiming that he or she has one of the cars used in the Goldfinger and Thunderball movies. I came across such a vehicle last November at the Classic Car Show in Birmingham, England.

Two cars were used in the filming, and Sean Connery drove one of them. The other two cars were built for the production company as promotional cars, travelling the world promoting the two movies.

Here’s a brief explanation of which car was which and what happened to them . . . as far as I can ascertain.

The Road Car (chassis number DP/2161/1): This car belonged to Aston Martin; it was the DB5 prototype, a modified DB4. It was referred to as the Road Car because it was used in the driving scenes in the movie.

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. 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, he sold it to Richard Loose of Utah. It had a very brief appearance in the movie Cannonball Run.

Loose retired in 1987 and decided to sell the DB5 and a 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III, also used in Goldfinger, at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.

Anthony Pugliese, a developer from Florida, purchased the car for $275,000 US.

Jack Grundy of Grundy Insurance told me last week that a very reputable appraiser put a value of $4 million on the car and Grundy insured it for $3.2 million, 80 per cent of the appraisal.

In 1997, the car was stolen from an aircraft hangar in Boca Raton, Fla. The circumstances of the theft were very suspicious. The car has never been seen since, and I suspect that it was destroyed.

Grundy paid the claim. The local community was shaken but not stirred!

The Gadget Car (chassis number DB5/1486/R): This car also belonged to Aston Martin and was used in the movies for all of the special effects.

All the gadgets were removed in 1968, and the car was sold to Jerry Lee in the United States. When Lee went to England to view the car, it looked very grim. Aston Martin spruced it up and Lee took it back to the States.

It was displayed at a few shows until it was damaged at a show in Memphis, Tenn. Lee was furious and vowed that it 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. Aston Martin would pay for the gadgets to be reinstalled. It was a huge success and the car was displayed one more time in 1981. It now lives in a special wing of Lee’s house and has never been publicly displayed since.

Publicity Car 1 (chassis number DB5/2017/R): 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 it and its twin, DB5/2008/R, to Anthony Bamford in 1969. Bamford purchased both cars for $3,750 — what a steal!

One year later, a friend of his, 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. Bamford still has the Ferrari to this day — it has to be worth about $10 million.

After four months of having fun with it, Luscombe-Whyte advertised the car in the Times newspaper in London. Frank Baker of Vancouver made him an offer he could not refuse: $21,600 and an all-expenses-paid trip on the QE2 to New York.

Luscombe-Whyte would deliver the car from Montreal, driving it across Canada to Vancouver.

Baker offered an additional two weeks’ holiday on the West Coast.

The car spent the next 13 years on display outside Baker’s Attic Restaurant in West Vancouver. Baker fell upon hard times in the early ’80s and sold the car to Alf Spence.

Spence sold it to a consortium headed by Ernest Hartz of San Francisco. The DB5 was offered for sale; they were hoping to get $165,000 but received a high bid of $80,000.

The new owner was the 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 it was not the car used in the movies, 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 Louman Collection in the National Automobile Museum, Raamadonksveer, Holland, where it remains until this day.

Publicity Car 2 (chassis number DB5/2008/R): Bamford kept the other car of the pair manufactured for Eon Productions and had some fun with it until the news of the sale of the Road Car hit the press.

It was 1971 and time to cash in. Bamford sold the car to Bruce Atchley, the owner of the Smoky Mountain Car Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. Atchley wanted it for his son, Hugh.

The car was installed inside an iron-barred cage and was displayed from 1971 until 2006.

RM Auctions of Blenheim, Ont., was given the task of preparing the car in its workshop for sale, ensuring that all of the gadgets worked.

I was at the auction last month in Phoenix, Ariz. The car was driven into a darkened ballroom by Terry Lobzun of RM — with the machine-guns omitting a rat-tat-tat just like in the movie — to great fanfare and applause.

The hammer fell at $2.4 million. I have since learned that DB5/2008/R will have a new home in Switzerland.

For many years, all four cars resided in North America. The number has now been reduced to one, and that car is without question the only remaining survivor of the pair used in the original movies.

No other car has attracted so much attention for a combined 13 minutes of footage.

I have only touched the surface of this incredible story involving the four cars.

Dave Worrell has spent a lifetime researching this topic. If you have an interest in the Bond vehicles, reading his book is a must. For more information and details of how to order a copy, visit www.bondbooks.biz.

Nigel Matthews is the appraiser of vintage and collector cars for the Insurance Corp. of B.C.

Source: http://autos.canada.com/news/story.html?id=d8eeed12-0698-43f1-a886-64f03c85ce2a&p

It’s hard to beat the experience of staring down a herd of longhorn cattle contained only by dinky metal gates. But in the basement of the Cobo Conference Center here, serious press conferences are tempered by an array of exhibits both surprising and engaging.

The slick, white race car “Mach 5″—boasting a top speed of 300 mph and max torque of 1000 lb.-ft.—featured in the upcoming Speed Racer movie is on display. Its specs are impressive, until you take a closer look and realize the lights are decals and body joints are simply lines of black paint. With the sophistication of the movie’s digital F/X, Warner Bros. opted to forgo a drivable vehicle, creating just the shell of the machine. Still, we’re looking forward to getting lost in the Speed Racer fantasy when the film hits theaters this summer.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
An ancient derelict racing car is discovered by Jeremy and Jemima who persuade their father, Caractacus Potts, to buy and restore her. After the car’s restoration they take her on a picnic to the seaside joined by Truly Scrumptious, daughter of Lord Scrumptious, the owner of a local sweet factory. While Potts tells a story about Pirates a nearby tugboat becomes the yacht of the evil Baron Bomburst of Vulgaria who has come to steal ‘Chitty’. The magical car takes them on an amazing adventure and transforms itself into a hovercraft and aeroplane.

When making a multi-million dollar production, film producers always make sure that they cover themselves should anything go wrong and hold up production. In the case of vehicles used in films, they always make sure there is at least one back up vehicle available should the main vehicle crash or fail to work. In the case of the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the film was centred around the car of the same name and because that car transformed its self into so many forms during the film several vehicles were used. In fact six cars were used in this film. Two being the racing car, one in a dilapidated state and the other the racing car that crashes. At the end of the film neither of these versions survived. Four other Chittys were produced for various parts of the rest of the film. The hovercraft car, that transforms from car to hovercraft, and three other cars. The hovercraft car was made slightly lighter than the others by using aluminium instead of brass for some of the parts. It was also hung from a jig or helicopter for some of the flying scenes. Its engine was removed during filming to lighten the car further. It was later refitted with an engine and runs perfectly. It takes a very careful eye to spot the different cars used in the film but each one is minutely different and each can be identified if you know what to look for. ‘Cars of the Stars’ motor museum in Keswick, England owns the ‘hovercraft car’ and also the main road car used in the film and in fact this latter car is the most original and untouched of all the surviving Chitty cars with its original engine and interior.

This is a full sized Mater.
The task to transform cartons into real cars was given by Pixar to Eddie Paul’s “Customs By Eddie Paul”, a division of EP Industries, Inc.

The project included real-life versions of the characters “Lightning McQueen” (based on a Pontiac Trans Am), “Sally Carrera” (based on a Porsche 911) and tow truck “Mater”.

Each vehicle was built in less than one month; the development process included computer 3D modeling - done in Rhino - CNC machining and the bodyshop expertise of Eddie’s team.

The cars were displayed at various automotive events to promote the movie and were presented recently at the SEMA Show.

Among the technical difficulties of this particular jobs was the presence of mouths in place of the front grilles. In order to get airflow into the engine, Paul’s team installed intake fans to collect air from the underbody and the interior.

The Batmobile that was featured in Batman Forever has sold at auction for $297,000 - a lot less than its $800,000 estimate. The buyer did get a bargain as the car cost around $2.8m to make. The driver will have some restrictions though including not being able to drive on public roads.