British cars from the early James Bond films

The James Bond films have always been a showcase for genuinely luxurious items. It’s not just impeccable suits, spectacular watches and an elegant, exclusive lifestyle. What has been part of the mythology of Super 007 are the cars he has had the pleasure of driving throughout a long cinematic saga. In a previous article we reviewed the models that appeared in Spectre, the latest instalment, but now we are going to look at the main vehicles that have appeared in the films.

Although everyone tends to focus on the Aston Martin DB5, before it there were several models that started the legend of one of the most popular film series of all time. The first of them was a Sunbeam Alpine, which appeared in Dr. No. This model had a 1.5-litre engine and produced 80 CV. This car has its own story, as it belonged to a resident of the island where the scenes featuring it were filmed. Since there was no other sports car available, it became the model chosen for the film.

In the next film of the series, the Bentley Mark IV appeared, a model that was the first car launched by the British brand after the end of the Second World War. It was on the market from 1948 to 1956. This particular model even had a telephone, which is quite surprising for a car appearing in a 1960s film.

Goldfinger was the title of the third film and marked the debut of the car that many consider the most iconic of the whole saga. The Aston Martin DB5 appeared in six films, the last of them Skyfall, as a tribute. In this case it was an agreement between the brand and the production company. They wanted Her Majesty’s best Secret Service agent to drive a true symbol of British motoring. So the Aston Martin DB5 was chosen and equipped with several gadgets to turn it into a supercar.

Of all the units prepared for the films, only one has survived. It was sold to an American collector for 12,000 dollars and in 2010 it was sold at auction for €4.1 million. A good deal, certainly.

The Aston Martin DBS featured in the films in two versions. First, the classic one, launched in 1969 and equipped with a 4.0-litre engine producing 282 CV, while the one we saw in Casino Royale, the more recent version, had a 6.0 V12 engine producing 517 CV.

Aston Martin has been the brand chosen for other films, such as The Living Daylights, where Timothy Dalton drove a V8 Vantage, which was also modified to fit it with MI6 technology. The Lotus Sprit and the Lotus Sprit Turbo also featured in two films, The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only. The first was amphibious in its film, although in reality it had a Lotus engine producing 210 CV.

In an upcoming article we will look at other cars, great models that accompanied agent 007 in more films of the saga, when the producers began to move away from British brands and German, American and even Japanese models arrived. Up until the moment they returned with force, reclaiming their place in the James Bond legend.

Technical specifications of this car

RoadsterAston Martin Vantage4 versions · from 200,000 €