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Aston Martin will revive James Bond’s DB5 at a price only Goldfinger can afford

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Sean Connery as James Bond with Aston Martin DB5
Image used with permission by copyright holder

James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 is one of the all-time great movie cars, and it’s about to make a comeback. Aston is working with Eon Productions, the company that produces the Bond films, to build 25 new DB5s identical to the car that appeared in 1964’s Goldfinger. As with the recent DB4 GT project, Aston prefers the term “continuation cars,” not replicas.

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Each new DB5 will be an exact copy of the original movie cars (one of which just reportedly resurfaced after years in hiding), right down to gadgets like the trademark revolving license plate. Unlike a genuine 1960s DB5, however, the new cars won’t be road legal. Aston can’t certify newly built cars designed for ’60s safety standards.

Check out the fun movie gadgets in action:

Aston Martin Goldfinger DB5 Continuation Gadget Update

The DB5 was introduced in 1963 as an evolution of the DB4 and made its star turn in Goldfinger the following year. Even though it ended its on-screen time with a crash, the DB5 forged a connection between Bond and Aston in the public consciousness. The car has appeared in six other 007 films since then: Thunderball (1965), GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Casino Royale (2006), Skyfall (2012), and Spectre (2015). Numerous other Astons have appeared in Bond films, and the automaker even built a car, the DB10, specifically for Spectre.

Like the originals, the DB5 continuation cars will use a 4.0-liter inline-six, producing 282 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque. Aston quotes a 0 to 60 mph time of 7.1 seconds and a top speed of 148 mph. In a testament to how far performance cars have come in 50 years, those figures are fairly unimpressive today. A modern DB11 will do zero to 60 mph in 4.0 seconds and reach a top speed of 187 mph, and that’s with the smaller 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8. Aston offers a 5.2-liter twin-turbo V12 version that’s even faster.

Aston will build just 25 007-spec DB5s, priced at 2.75 million pounds (about $3 million at current exchange rates) each. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2020.

Building new versions of old cars and selling them for millions of dollars is becoming a trend among automakers. Aston previously gave the DB4 GT, a racing model that preceded the DB5, the same treatment. Jaguar started with the Lightweight E-Type and went on to resurrect the XKSS and D-Type. Even at seven figures, the prices of continuation cars are likely lower than what originals will fetch at auction.

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Stephen Edelstein
Stephen Edelstein
Contributing Editor
Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

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Audi halts vehicle deliveries to the U.S. as it mulls impact of tariffs
2021 Audi Q5

If you’d been thinking of buying an Audi, now might be the time.  The German brand, owned by the Volkswagen Group, has announced it would halt shipments to the U.S. in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all imported vehicles.
Audi is currently holding cars that arrived after the tariffs took effect, on April 3, in U.S. ports. But it still has around 37,000 vehicles in its U.S. inventory, which should be able to meet demand for about two months, according to Reuters.
Automakers on average hold enough cars to meet U.S. demand for about three months, according to Cox Automotive.
Audi should be particularly affected by the tariffs: The Q5, its best-selling model in the U.S., is produced in Mexico, while other models, such as the A3, A4, and A6 are produced in Germany.
Holding shipments is obviously a temporary measure to buy time for Audi and parent company Volkswagen. If tariffs stay in place, vehicle prices would likely have to go up accordingly, unless some production is shifted to the U.S. Volkswagen already has a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is planning a new plant in South Carolina. That latter plant, however, isn’t expected to be operational until 2027 and is currently dedicated to building electric vehicles for VW’s Scout Motors brand.
Other global automakers have also taken drastic measures in response to Trump’s tariffs. Jaguar Land Rover on April 5 said it is pausing shipments of its its UK-made cars to the United States this month. The British sports-luxury vehicle maker noted that the U.S. market accounts for nearly a quarter of its global sales, led by the likes of Range Rover Sports, Defenders, and Jaguar F-PACE.
And on April 3, Nissan, the biggest Japanese vehicle exporter to the United States, announced it will stop taking new U.S. orders for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs, the QX50 and QX55.

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Waymo faces questions about its use of onboard cameras for AI training, ads targeting
Two people exit a Waymo taxi.

In an iconic scene from the 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report, on-the-run Agent John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, struggles to walk through a mall as he’s targeted by a multitude of personalized ads from the likes of Lexus, Guinness and American Express, everytime hidden detectors identify his eyes.
It was clearly meant as a warning about a not-so-desirable dystopian future.
Yet, 23 years later that future is at least partlially here in the online world and threatens to spread to other areas of daily life which are increasingly ‘connected’, such as the inside of cars. And the new testing grounds, according to online security researcher Jane Manchun Wong, might very well be automated-driving vehicles, such as Waymo’s robotaxis.
On X, Wong unveiled an unreleased version of Waymo’s privacy policy that suggests the California-based company is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including interior cameras, to train generative AI models and to offer targetted ads.
“Waymo may share data to improve and analyze its functionality and to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to your interests,” the Waymo’s unreleased privacy statement reads. “You can opt out of sharing your information with third parties, unless it’s necessary to the functioning of the service.”
Asked for comments about the unreleased app update, Waymo told The Verge that it contained “placeholder text that doesn’t accurately reflect the feature’s purpose”.
Waymo’s AI-models “are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads,” spokesperson Julia Ilina said.
Waymo’s robotaxis, which are operating on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, do contain onboard cameras that monitor riders. But Ilina says these are mainly used to train AI models for safety, finding lost items, check that in-car rules are followed, and to improve the service.
The new feature is still under development and offers riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection, Ilina says.
But as we all get used to ads targeting based on everything that’s somehow connected to the web, it seems a once-distant vision of the future may be just around the corner.

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