Behind the Wheel of James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5

The Aston Martin DB5 is the single greatest movie car in history. The DeLorean from Back to the Future can get lost at 88 mph. The titular Christine lacked staying power. The 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T destroyed in Vanishing Point is forgotten by too many young filmgoers. The Cadillac ambulance the Ghostbusters transformed into Ecto-1 is too utilitarian. The Bandit’s 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am only works if it hears Jerry Reed music. Steve McQueen’s 1968 Mustang GT Fastback is a very close second, but second place still only earns silver.

The clear frontrunner, the DB5, is James Bond’s car of choice, a stylish artifact of an explosively creative era and the mechanical star of the first Bond film to power beyond mere cinematic success to blockbuster status. After Q Branch added some much-needed enhancements to the original vehicle, from dual machine guns to a rear bullet shield to the impossible ejector seat, 007 would drive his ever-faithful silver-gray lady in eight films: Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale, Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die.

Descriptions of the car flirt with cliché: iconic, legendary, eternal. But the term “sports car” need not apply. When it was originally designed and offered for sale at about $12,000, or £4,200 (with prices varying a bit for the non-ejecting convertible or depending on transmission), the DB5 qualified as a grand tourer, a luxury ride meant to carry adventurers, civilian and otherwise, across Europe.

The Bond of Ian Fleming’s novels preferred Bentley to Aston Martin, driving a Blower, a big-engined period racer that was anachronistic even in the books’ Cold War era. (The fictional British Secret Service agent did not drive an Aston Martin in the books until Goldfinger.) Tinseltown rumor has it that the DB5 wasn’t even the first choice for the cinematic 007. As the tale goes, Bond producers first approached Jaguar, but the automaker declined, even after the relative success of the first two films, Dr. No and From Russia with Love.

After some desperate negotiations, Aston Martin gave EON Productions, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman two DB5s for Guy Hamilton’s shoot of Goldfinger. Although the car meets a tragic end against a wall while Oddjob looks on with a sinister smile, the idea of 007 forever wed to his deadly ride would live on through 23 films, until the car’s headlight-mounted miniguns tore up SPECTRE in Matera in 2021.

The DB5 fixed itself in this scribe’s heart and mind in my 10th year, in the suburbs outside Milwaukee. My father, a movie lover who embraced any Bond film starring Sean Connery, sat me down in my upstairs bedroom for the ABC Sunday Night Movie, Goldfinger (edited for network TV). Within days, I was holding the Corgi DB5 model, with a tiny 007 behind the wheel and a henchman I could fire through the roof at will. Kids hadn’t started swallowing toys or taking Jarts to the head yet, so the ejector seat got a workout during the imaginary chase scenes playing out on my bedroom carpet.

Firing ahead through the gun barrel of life, my work as a journalist took me all around the world, just like a secret agent, only without the women, the firearms, the money and the women. Despite those differences, I never lost my affinity for Bond or my unspoken mission to drive a DB5.

Circumstances align in impossible ways if we stay in the game long enough, and the separate paths of automotive reporter and James Bond fan spun around each other in aimless orbits until the summer of 2026. While I was fortunate enough to review 21st-century Aston Martin models in spots around the world, I pestered the company’s angelically patient media relations team, pursuing any opportunity to drive a DB5.

For years, whenever business brought me to the U.K., I’d ask whether there was a version of the car I could experience. When U.K. trips weren’t frequent enough, I expanded the requests to any visit to Europe. Of course, finding a functioning, roadworthy DB5 outside a private collection isn’t as easy as renting a Toyota from Hertz.

The quest finally came to fruition thanks to two accommodating souls: Kevin Watters, Aston Martin’s director of communications, and Paul Spires, president of Aston Martin Works. When another automaker brought me to Warwickshire, Watters got word that a DB5 would be in the Aston Martin Works shop.

That’s exactly what the Spires-led operation does. Based in Newport Pagnell, Aston Martin Works takes in heritage vehicles from around the world for mechanical adjustments, refurbishments, bespoke alterations and more. Any Aston Martin from any era of the firm’s 113-year history can find its way home for special treatment.

In summer of 2026, a freshly tuned 1965 DB5 in Silver Birch (Bond’s color) sat at Aston Martin Works awaiting delivery to a client somewhere in Northern Europe. It needed a road test before boarding the ferry anyway, so why not let an American scribbler with amateur racing experience finally live the dream?

In 2020, Aston Martin built 25 Goldfinger DB5 Continuation cars to honor the film, and eight more in 2021 to salute the 25th Bond film, No Time to Die. They came complete with working (if replica) machine guns, a tracking-device screen, smoke-screen pipes, rotating number plates (including the proper BMT 216A) and a button on the shift knob promising an ejector seat that would never actually launch. Spires keeps one in the Aston Martin Works showroom just to let fools like me play with it. My test car, however, came without Q’s gadgets. It was meant for proper, street-legal driving.

Before the mission began, one question threatened to Blofeld the whole thing: Could I fit in the driver’s seat? No Bond actor was petite, but none were 6’3”, either. I lowered myself in, gingerly, mentally recording every moment of finally settling into the bucket seat of my bucket list.

Cars were smaller in 1965, and this grand tourer would fit inside many of today’s similarly named vehicles. Once I was in and had buckled the rudimentary seatbelt, the cockpit proved both snug and predictably analog. Part of the reason Bond’s in-car gadgets seemed so remarkable in the ’60s is that electronic, and even electric, interior features were just arriving in the automotive industry.

Creature comforts were sparser more than half a century ago. The DB5 had leather seats and a racing steering wheel, but its makers used fewer fabrics and trim pieces to hide cables, the nuts and bolts of hand construction or the linkages of the brake and clutch pedals.

With the high clutch pressed to the floor and a proper key turned in an old-fashioned ignition, the DB5 started without complaint and grumbled impatiently to get moving. Fortunately, I belong to the last generation, Gen X, that routinely learned to drive stick, and along the way I picked up the ability to shift with my left hand in a right-hand-drive U.K. car. Still, before I eased into first and let out the clutch, I felt nerves I hadn’t known since my driver’s test at 16. I would keep the drive simple and safe.

By the numbers, the 1965 DB5’s inline six-cylinder engine produced 282 horsepower, good for a top speed of 145 mph and a 0-60 mph time of 7.1 seconds. Though a horse or two has surely escaped the barn over the decades, the aging automotive star still accelerated smoothly onto the village streets. That was the first striking realization: The DB5 is a car. It climbed to legendary pop-culture status, but first and foremost it was a smooth, comfortable luxury grand tourer meant to be driven.

In the end, my only regret is that I didn’t relax and take it all in a bit more. I felt a sacred duty to Aston Martin, Mr. Spires and MI6 to get the DB5 home safely. It turns out making dreams come true can be serious business.

I rode Bond’s ride for less than an hour, but even a few minutes would have been enough to fulfill any 007 fan’s impossible dream. To cross Fleming with Shakespeare: “We few. We happy few.”

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