What do you think the most famous car in the world is? There's Steve McQueen's Bullitt 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback. What about "Wet Nellie", the 1975 Lotus Esprit S1 which the studio turned into a submarine for $500k? The 66 Ford Thunderbird from Thelma & Louise? The 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT Pursuit Special from Mad Max? The 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 from Back to the Future?
RM Sotheby's is putting one of the three surviving 1965 Aston Martin DB5s fitted with MI6 Q Branch specifications from Goldfinger up for auction in Monterey in August. Friends and readers, this is one for those of us who are tired of putting up with incompetent and angry drivers.
The DB5 comes complete with a fully functioning Browning .30 calibre machine gun in each fender, wheel-hub-mounted tyre-slashers, smokescreen dispensers, a nail spreader, tyre shredders, revolving licence plates and an ejector seat for when the fun police finally catch up.
Fifty years ago, media boss Jerry Lee paid Aston Martin $16k for a 1964 ex-Goldfinger and Thunderball DB5. In 2010 he had RM auction it in London with reasonable expectations of close to $8m. But the bidding war between Ohio hotel and bank owner Harry Yeaggy and Scotland's Stephen Shabbir only lasted 10 minutes with Harry slamming five big ones on the table.