The DB5 Goldfinger Continuation has all the Bond gadgets

This week sees the first of the 25 DB5 Goldfinger Continuation editions, announced in 2018 at a price of £2.75 million ex-tax each, roll out the door at Newport Pagnell – where the last DB5 was built 55 years ago.

What then-Aston boss Andy Palmer called two years ago  the “ultimate collectors’ fantasy” is a  fantasy no longer as Aston Martin Works gears up to complete delivery of the 25 cars through the latter half of 2020.

We don’t know the identity of the owners – if we did we would probably have to kill you –  but we do know they must be seriously besotted by Bond. While the cars are immaculately hand-crafted (over 4,500 hours) and meticulously detailed reproductions of the on-screen DB5, they are not road legal. Maybe in true Bond style the buyers all have private islands…

Given each car’s range of secret-agent optional extras it may be a good thing you are unlikely to come up against one on the road. The only thing missing seems to be the ejector seat (but even then you do still get the button for it in the gear knob and a removable roof panel above the passenger seat is on the options list). Otherwise the Silver Birch-painted, tripled-carburettor straight six-powered DB5 is as close to the film car as it is surely possible to get…

The 12 gadgets included with every DB5 Goldfinger Continuation (Pay attention Bond!):

1. Rear smoke screen delivery system
2. Rear simulated oil slick delivery system
3. Revolving number plates front and rear
4. Simulated twin front machineguns
5. Bullet resistant rear shield
6. Battering rams front and rear
7. Simulated tyre slasher
8. Simulated radar screen tracker map
9. Telephone in driver’s door
10. Armrest and centre console-mounted switchgear
11. Under-seat hidden weapons tray
12. Remote control

The Continuation model, which has been created in association with Bond filmmaker EON Productions, is a tribute to Bond film special effects supervisor Chris Corbould OBE. His imaginative “extras” for the DB5 in the 1964 movie Goldfinger enthralled a generation even if the closest most of us could ever get to one was the Corgi model.

All 25 cars will be finished in Silver Birch and feature what Aston calls some sympathetic modifications and enhancements to ensure quality and reliability. The car’s 4.0-litre naturally aspirated inline-six with 290PS, five-speed ZF manual transmission, mechanical limited-slip differential, live rear axle, unassisted steering and servoed steel disc brakes are all true to the original, as are the aluminium body panels over a steel chassis.

Fewer than 900 DB5 coupes were built between 1963 and 1965, with the car – and Aston Martin’s fame – taking off when chosen as the wheels of choice for world’s best-known secret agent.

“The DB5 is, without question, the most famous car in the world by virtue of its 50-plus year association with James Bond,” says Aston design chief Marek Reichman. “To see the first customer car finished and realise that this is the first new DB5 we have built in more than half a century really is quite a moment.”