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Behind the Wheel of James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5

Decades after a Corgi model sparked his obsession, our writer took a Silver Birch 1965 Aston Martin onto the English roads around Newport Pagnell. The experience turned out to be less about nostalgia or cinema history than about the simple pleasure of piloting a beautifully made machine.

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.

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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........

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