Five of the Most Iconic James Bond Cars in the History of Cinema

Since 1962, when the James Bond franchise introduced the audience to Dr No, the franchise has produced 25 films. In that time, 007 has driven everything from a Ford Mustang in Las Vegas to a Citroën 2CV through the French countryside. But the cars that endure in the cultural imagination are a short list, and they are infamous for specific reasons. Below are five that have earned their place.

The DB5 is a British grand tourer produced by Aston Martin. The car was designed by Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera and was originally produced from 1963 to 1965. It features an all-aluminium six-cylinder engine producing 282bhp, with a top speed of 145mph. Special effects expert John Stears modified a DB5 prototype for the 1964 film Goldfinger, equipping it with machine guns behind the front indicators, a rear bulletproof shield, revolving number plates, tyre slashers, and an ejector seat.

Aston Martin was initially reluctant to participate but was persuaded into a product placement deal. One of the original screen cars sold at RM Sotheby's in 2019 for $6.385 million (approximately Rs 59.45 crore), making it the most expensive movie car in Hollywood history at the time. The DB5 has since appeared in eight Bond films, most recently No Time to Die in 2021.

For The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977, the freshly unveiled Lotus Esprit S1 was given one of cinema's most memorable moments: a jump off the end of a pier, after which it hides its wheels, transforms into a submarine, and fires torpedoes. Produced from 1976 to 1980, the Esprit S1 was powered by a 2.0-litre inline-four engine and could reach 60mph in 7.8 seconds. Lotus provided seven bodyshells on top of the two driving cars for the sequence. One of the submarine prop cars was later purchased by Elon Musk in 2013 with stated plans to make it functional. The car has since been nicknamed Wet Nellie by Bond fans, a reference to the autogyro Little Nellie from You Only Live Twice.

When introduced in 1977, the Aston Martin V8 Vantage was described as Britain's first supercar, with a 170mph top speed and a 0 to 60mph time of 5.3 seconds, one tenth of a second quicker than the Ferrari Daytona. It appeared in The Living Daylights in 1987, driven by Timothy Dalton, fitted by Q Branch with wheel lasers, missiles, spiked tyres, a rocket booster, and a heads-up targeting display on the windscreen. Due to an 18-month waiting list for the V8 Vantage Volante, the production team sourced and bought three used Vantages for filming. In total, 11 cars were used across the production, of which only three were driveable. The car returned in No Time to Die in 2021, wearing the same registration plate as its 1987 predecessor.

The Z8 was built around an aluminium spaceframe chassis and powered by a five-litre 394bhp V8 and six-speed gearbox shared with the E39 M5. It appeared in The World Is Not Enough in 1999, driven by Pierce Brosnan, and represented the final film in a three-picture deal BMW had signed with EON Productions in 1995. At the time of filming, BMW had only a prototype shell and a running test car ready, so it provided the production team with the shell and designs to build replica kit cars for the stunts. The car's screen life was brief: it was sliced in half by a helicopter equipped with timber-cutting saws. Only 5,703 Z8S were ever built, with production running from 1999 to 2003.

The DB10 was developed exclusively for Spectre in 2015 to celebrate 50 years of Aston Martin and James Bond, with design cues that heavily influenced the brand's 2017 Vantage road car. Only ten were ever built, eight of which were featured in the film. In the film's centrepiece Rome chase sequence, Bond borrows the car from 009 and is pursued through the historic city at night, with the car's flamethrowers ultimately saving the situation before Bond ejects seconds before it flies into the Tiber River. Later in 2016, one of the DB10s was auctioned at Christie's in London. Its design, overseen by chief creative officer Marek Reichman, marked a deliberate signal of the direction Aston Martin's road car range was heading.