El Aston Martin DB5 It is an icon that car collectors pay dearly for. And all because he achieved ‘stardom’ thanks to the saga of James Bond. In fact, there is no car that has achieved such fame thanks to the world of cinema, which shows that reaching agreements with film production companies by car manufacturers can be good business.
Many think that Sean Connery premiered this car in Goldfingerbut this is not true because at that time the actor actually drove a Aston Martin DB4 Series V, a model that on the outside was practically identical to the later DB5. In any case, the film’s release roughly coincided with the car’s release, and car and film spurred each other on to success.
Connery felt ‘pigeonholed’
The truth is Sean Connery he did not always want to be remembered above all for his roles as 007. Perhaps because he felt a kind of typecasting from which it cost him to free himself. But his family says that always kept a frame framing of this film in which he was seen stopped next to the car on a road in the Swiss Alps.
–The actor, posing next to the car of the film in the Swiss Alps.
It’s more, Jason Conneryhis son, claims that his father “he used to talk to me about having his own DB5 for no other reason than that he loved the car, and I think in hindsight represented something in his life that was unique and captured a moment in the time”.
It’s never too late
So Connery made up his mind. And although they say “it’s never too late”, he played hard to get: he was in 2018two years before he died of senile dementia, when he finally approached RS Williamsthe best British specialist (and probably the world) of these cars and acquired a 1964 unit with five-speed manual transmission, Dunlop RS5 tires and Motorola radio with electric antenna.
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But he put a condition: the car it had to be painted exactly in the color ‘Snow Shadow Grey’ (Snow Shadow Grey), the authentic color of the Aston Martins used in Goldfinger y Thunderball. Apparently, Connery was a demanding buyer who became an expert in whatever he was looking for.
Destined to be owned by the actor
The car had not originally been ordered on agent Qbut the dealer Cyril Williams Motors de Wolverhampton (Inglaterra) and its first owner was the owner of some dairies. Later it passed through two more owners until in the 1970s it became part of an Automobile Museum (Banham International Motor Museum, of Norfolk, England). This one closed in 1982 and the collection was dispersed. He later joined another collector’s car list until in 2017 passed to RS Williamswhere the actor bought it.
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Apparently he never wanted it to be known that he had bought that car and in his family they claim that only a few people knew he had it. Why? She never explained it. Perhaps after having tried to disentangle himself from his role as 007 for years, he was seen behind the wheel of Bond’s car it would seem a contradiction which he did not want to be accused of; we will never know.
What about the ejection passenger seat?
Besides, he drove it very comfortably; according to his son Jason, the old actor said that “driving the cars from the movies, loaded with all the gadgets, especially the machine guns in the front, made the car was really heavy from the front and that turning at low speed was a herculean taskso driving it without gadgets is a pleasure”. Of course, he also said that he would have kept the ejection passenger seatbut did not clarify who would I have wanted to see leaving fired.
–On the left, Jackie Stewart gives him ‘a lesson’ on how to drive.
since the actor died in 2020the car has remained in the hands of the family and has recently returned to RS Williams for overhaul before this august 18 by Broad Arrow Auctions. Part of the profits will go to the Jackie Stewart Dementia Foundation (3-time F1 world champion), with whom Connery was a friend. And the buyer will have the pleasure that the own Jackie Stewart gives it a ride driving the car while he tells him some of the anecdotes he lived with the actor.
From the price, by the way, the maximum bid is expected to stay between 1,400,000 and 1,800,000 euros. That is, double or almost what a unit in similar condition would cost. Will it be a sufficient reason for this that it was owned by the best 007 agent of all time? We will wait to find out by taking a Martini “mixed, not shaken”.
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