James Bond’s Gadget-Filled Goldfinger Aston Martin Just Sold For $6.38 Million

There are a lot of famous Hollywood cars, including Back to the Future’s DeLorean, K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, and The Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee. But none are more renowned than James Bond’s collection of gadget-filled Aston Martins. In 1963, Eon Productions commissioned four Aston Martin DB5 models: two for Goldfinger (1964) and two to promote Thunderball (1965).

Like its DB4 predecessor, the DB5 was named after Sir David Brown, the owner of Aston Martin from 1947 to 1972. In Goldfinger, Sean Connery's 007 drives—and eventually crashes—the vehicle during a high-speed chase, where it gets covered in a hail of bullets. But Bond manages to kill five people before ruining the ride, making it the deadliest Aston Martin in Bond movie history (so far).

The vehicle in the movie came equipped with more than a dozen MI6-worthy modifications, like rotating registration plates, a smoke screen, and dual machine guns up front. In real life, the Aston Martin boasts all of those features plus oil slick dispensers, an ejector seat, and bullet-resistant glass.

On August 16, 2019, as Jalopnik reports, one of the three remaining “Goldfinger specified” DBs—this one restored in 2012—sold for a whopping $6.38 million at RM Sotheby’s auction in Monterey, California, becoming the most expensive Aston Martin DB5 in the world. (For comparison: another Goldfinger DB5 sold for $4.1 million in 2010.)

For those who want to know more about Bond’s Aston Martins—or the super-spy's various modes of transportation in general—check out the "Drive to a Kill" database below. The data, gathered and analyzed by UK-based leasing specialists Leasing Options, painstakingly breaks down the use of Bond’s cars, planes, and boats into kills, crashes, explosions, and air time.

Clocking in at 10 minutes and 21 seconds, the Goldfinger car had the most screen time of any of Bond's Aston Martins. Various models of the cars appeared in 10 Bond movies, most recently in 2015’s Spectre (though that car didn't leave a body count in its wake, which is part of what makes the Goldfinger model much more famous).