Spy car for sale, smoke screen included

FOR sale: One slightly used motor car – two owners, one careful, the other an excitable spy with a licence to thrill/kill.

It comes complete with two machine guns, a bullet-proof shield, revolving number plates, smoke screen, nail spreader and tyre-shredding blades that emerge from the hubcaps.

In other words, the ultimate James Bond sports car – the Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in the movies Goldfinger and Thunderball. It is up for sale for the first time in 40 years and is expected to fetch up to $5 million (€4m).

It is the same car Bond arrived in to play his famous round of golf with Goldfinger at an English golf club. And it is also the car he drove as he played “chicken” with the character Tilly Masterson’s Mustang car in the Alps.

The car, which also featured in 1965’s Thunderball, was bought from Aston Martin in 1969 by American radio DJ Jerry Lee for $12,000 (€10,000).

Mr Lee, now a philanthropist aged in his 70s, used to drive it around in the 1970s but it has been held in storage by him ever since. He is selling it at auction in London, with the proceeds going to the Jerry Lee Foundation.

The car, which has the number plate FMP 7B, is in perfect working condition and has about 30,000 miles on the clock.

Peter Haynes, of RM Auctions in London, which is selling the Aston Martin, said: “After the car was used in Thunderball, Aston Martin sold it to Mr Lee who has owned it ever since. The car was last seen in public in the 1970s and has been locked away in a private Bond-themed room since then.

“The car is up and running and all the gadgets still work too. You can use the smoke screen and oil slick discharge, the revolving number plates and activate the bullet-proof shield at the back.

“The machine guns obviously don’t work – they never have done – but you can still press a button inside and it moves them into position.” However, Bond wannabees are warned that the ejector seat is fake, although the button isn’t.

The auction takes place on October 27 and Mr Haynes said they are expecting huge interest in it from around the world.

There is also one tiny drawback, particularly if the new owner might wish to emulate 007 and bring it to the golf course. However Mr Haynes warned would-be buyers of one of the pitfalls of the famous car. “There isn’t much room in the boot because of the machinery for the bullet shield.”