001 | Right Car, Right Time.
The DB5 was driven not only by rock stars, but also by the worlds coolest secret agent. Who could resist?
Bunny girls brought an added dash of ’60s glamour at motor shows.
PAUL MCCARTNEY AND MICK JAGGER HAD DB6S. George Harrison, though, was the real petrolhead among 1960s rock royalty, and it was Harrison who was the first of them to acquire an Aston Martin habit.
Always the coolest Beatle, George had a DB5. What a time it was to be alive. By the mid-60s, the deprivations of wartime and the austerity years that followed already seemed like another universe. Life was being lived in Technicolor, Brittania was cool: its rock and pop stars ruled the airwaves, its couturiers ruled the catwalks, and its cars – from the Mini to the E-type – were the ones everyone wanted. AND AT THE VERY TOP OF THE WANT LIST WAS ASTON MARTIN. Then as now, few names had quite the same aura. Its cars combined performance, luxury, achingly good looks and a quintessential Englishness. And no car exuded Aston-ness – or captured the spirit of that heady age – more perfectly than a DB5. Sure, there had been great Astons before, beautiful ones too, but the DB5 WAS THE MODEL FOR WHICH ALL PLANETS ALIGNED. David Brown, the dapper, Yorkshire-born industrialist, had snapped up Aston Martin for a song just after the end of the war, and as prosperity slowly returned he was well-placed to capitalise. He also realised that the best way to sell sports cars was to go motor-racing. Which he did, right from the start, funding a works team to compete in the era’s greatest endurance races. In 1959 he was finally rewarded with outright victory at Le Mans for the fabulous DBR1 sportsracer. In the States, too, Aston was making its mark in sports car racing, the closely related DBR2 catching the eye of wealthy young enthusiasts. But none of it would have mattered if the roadgoing production cars hadn’t been up to scratch. HAPPILY, STARTING WITH THE LAUNCH OF THE DB4 IN 1958, ASTON MARTINS COULD STAND TOE-TO-TOE WITH THE WORLD’S GREATEST.
George Harrison and DB5, complete with white-wall tyres.
The DB4’s sublime lines were the work of an unsung genius called Federico Formenti, working for the Italian coachbuilder Touring of Milan. The engine was a brand-new 3.7-litre straight-six designed by Aston’s Polish born chief engineer, Tadek Marek. The strong platform chassis was the design of a modest Englishman, Harold Beach. AND THE WHOLE THING WAS HAND-BUILT AT NEWPORT PAGNELL IN THE ENGLISH SHIRES. Which meant the DB4 combined Italian style with a very British soul. And it passed through various evolutions (or ‘series’, as Aston aficionados call them) – until in 1963 it was relaunched. As the DB5. The all-aluminium straight-six had been increased in capacity from 3.7 to 4.0 litres. Even in standard tune, peak power was now up to 282bhp, and there was the option of a German-made ZF five-speed gearbox (all DB4s had been four-speeders) which quickly became standard equipment. THE COMBINATION WAS A POTENT ONE. THE DB5 WAS CAPABLE OF CRUISING AT 130MPH ON EUROPE’S FAST EXPANDING MOTORWAY NETWORK – with the occasional foray to near-as-dammit 150mph if the driver’s nerve held on the longest straights. These were different times – manufacturers, including Aston Martin, often used Britain’s the nunrestricted motorways for high-speed testing. Most famously, or infamously, racer ‘Gentleman’ Jack Sears clocked 185mph on the M1 in an AC Cobra Coupé in a pre-Le Mans test session in June 1964. When the press found out, it was front-page news – but in fact such runs were fairly common practice at the time. THE DB5 ALSO BROUGHT NEW LEVELS OF REFINEMENT AND SOPHISTICATION TO AN ASTON.
Different times, when Britain’s recently opened motorways were used for high-speed testing.
There was a change from Dunlop to Girling brakes, with twin hydraulic circuits for added safety. The electrics were now powered by an alternator rather than a dynamo for added reliability, and there were extra silencers in the exhaust system. Electric windows were standard equipment, and Sundym tinted glass, too, while for the first time the optional extras included air-conditioning. It was now a subtly different car to the DB4 – a genuine, continent-eating GT. NO ROADGOING ASTON HAD EVER EXUDED SUCH EFFORTLESS EUROPEAN COOL. ROAD TESTERS LOVED IT. In the States (where about a quarter of DB5s found a home in the ’60s), Road & Track magazine concluded: ‘One tends to think of the Aston Martin as a sports car, but it is in fact a true GT car because it combines the performance and handling of a sports car with all the luxuries of a fully-equipped sedan [saloon]. ‘At $13,000 it is beyond the reach of the majority, but for those who are able to beg, borrow or steal money in this quantity, and want the type of car which the French so aptly describe as a voiture de grande luxe et de grande tourisme, then the Aston Martin DB5 is hard to beat.’
The fact was, for a certain type of discerning American petrolhead, THERE WAS SOMETHING ESPECIALLY COVETABLE ABOUT EUROPEAN SPORTS CARS – the styling, the leather-lined cockpits, the cultured engine notes, the race-proven handling. From James Dean’s Porsche Spyder to Steve McQueen’s Jaguar XKSS, they were the cars to have and to be seen in. And then James Bond appeared in an Aston Martin, and suddenly an Aston was the coolest and the most coveted of them all. WITHIN THE SPACE OF TWO YEARS THE DB5 HAD BECOME THE MOST FAMOUS CAR IN THE WORLD.
Hard to believe now, but Aston Martin was initially reluctant to supply a car when Eon Productions started filming 1964’s Goldfinger. Fortunately, the management eventually relented and released a surplus DB5 prototype, at that stage still painted in its original Dubonnet Rosso. Registered BMT 216A, it was kitted out with production designer Ken Adam’s famous gadgets and re-emerged with the now famous Silver Birch paint-job. GOLDFINGER, RELEASED IN SEPTEMBER 1864, WAS A SMASH HIT, and the combination of Sean Connery’s immaculately tailored 007 and Aston’s Italian-suited DB5 burned itself into popular culture. When the same combination returned in the follow-up film, 1965’s Thunderball, the effect was complete.
THE DB5 WAS DRIVEN NOT ONLY BY ROCK STARS, BUT ALSO BY THE WORLDS COOLEST SECRET AGENT.
WHO COULD RESIST?
