James Bond’s car comes to life, but no ejector seat here

James Bond is lonely. It’s just 007 and his gadget-laden 1965 Aston Martin DB5 these days. He hasn’t had any company since his last passenger was ejected. His car phone can’t call anyone; for one thing, its inventor didn’t remember to include a dial. His radar-mapping system is frozen on some place in rural Sussex, and just emits beeps like a sonar signal from a submarine movie.

Even the fender-mounted machine guns seem to be out of bullets.

What’s an international man of mystery supposed to do these days for a bit of excitement?

Aston Martin has an answer: The 107-year-old British luxury carmaker is re-creating the Bond DB5 from the 1964 movie ‘Goldfinger’, starring Sean Connery, in painstaking detail.

A special run of 25 “Goldfinger Continuation” DB5s is being hand-built at the same facility in Newport Pagnell that produced all 898 originals between 1963 and 1965. The cars are finished in the same Silver Birch paint scheme, the interior leather is identical in color and texture, and the dashboard and gauges are as true to the original appearance as possible. Aston Martin even called upon the special-effects wizard from the Bond films, Chris Corbould, to supervise their re-creation.

The movie car was equipped with a lethal array of nonstandard gadgets, to aid Bond in his crime fighting. These included oil-slick sprayers, smoke-screen foggers, a retractable bullet-resistant shield, a passenger ejection seat, a nail spreader, hidden machine guns in the fenders and telescoping battering rams.

There are also concessions to the real world. There will be no ejection seat, as no “non-mischievous” use could be identified for it. Same with the nail dumper. The oil and smoke sprayers will emit simulated substances. And the machine guns won’t fire ammunition.