The Aston Martin Db5
Mention the Aston Martin DB5, and the most likely response you will get will be something to do with James Bond.
To the cognoscenti, this can be somewhat irritating, in much the same way as a cliche jars with writers. You see, while the Bond tie-up put both Aston Martin and the Bond franchise on the map, it can be annoying if you own one and you have people asking whether machine guns come out of the sidelights on yours too. It's also annoying if people assume that the thirteen-or-so minutes of celluloid celebrity is the beginning and the end of the car's talents, because that would be like admiring Pavarotti for his girth.
For as with most things Aston Martin, there's a lot more to the DB5 than just two-and-a-half tons of superbly crafted car.
Aston Martins are more in the manner of evolutionary rather than revolutionary design. It may be, as with the DB2/4 of 1953, that evolution sparks revolution, but evolution is the order of the day. We can, however, skip the first dozen years of David Brown's stewardship of the combined forces of Aston Martin and Lagonda, to visit 1958, and the dawn of a brand-new range of cars, built to the Superleggera principles of Carrozziera Touring of Milan. The DB4, with its sleek, italianate bodywork clothing the same consummate engineering for which Aston Martin was renowned, was the result of the company's quest for bigger and better things, and to take the company into the supercar territory of Ferrari, Maserati et al. (Lamborghini would still be five years in the future).
And they succeeded in style.
The DB4 series 1 was a good car, by any standards - but by the standards of Aston Martin and its customers, it was rather wanting. And so, with a few modifications to iron out the niggles, the series two was born. This, again, was the subject of rework, and modification made the series three. There were two more major modifications, with corresponding series classification - and in October of 1963 they had completed another, more comprehensive, set of modifications, when someone said "there are so many changes, it warrants another model designation". And so the DB5 was born.
Oddly enough, the prototype DB5 was the main car for the James Bond film, "Goldfinger". Wearing the numberplate BMT 216A - and the chassis number DP216/1, this DB4 series 5 with modifications became the "DB5 with modifications" and, consequently, the most famous car in the world.
