Aston Martin db5 an iconic car in the James Bond movies

The chance to drive an Aston Martin db5 painted silver birch and with the number plate BMT 206 a something that any James Bond fan would leap at the question is just how far should you go too much Dean is too much is this even straight alright this the 60s kind of bit bit spy team milk try isn't it how about skiing bond Alpine bond did Roger Moore maybe yeah no well then I'm not doing Daniel Craig coming out of the sea nobody needs to see that in the end it seemed best just to stick with my own jumper best not to try to be James Bond.

It's a misogynist alcoholic womanizer of a secret spy with really pretty unresolved violence issues I'm not like that now if you know your bond literature then you'll be aware that in the book Goldfinger double-oh-seven actually uses a DB mark 3 or a DB 3 as Fleming called it but then when they came to make the film of it they simply picked the latest Aston Martin which at the time was this DV 5 the db5 was produced between 1963 and 1965 and was styled by turing it is powered by a four liter all aluminium straight-6 putting out around 200 and each brake horsepower through a live rear axle it weighs about 1500 kilos and feels very luxurious.

Inside really with full leather and electric windows ejector seats sadly were not regular fitment it's the first time I've actually I think ever driven a DV 5 and it is wonderful that's great sense. View out over the bonnet the big wheel these dials the Smiths dials it's a proper dream come true what a glorious thing this is our you have to be the God how on earth he ever did some of those car chases which seems like there's no idea and to think just how rare this car is except there's another one over there yes it appears that there is more than one db5 at Silverstone at least one has some damage one has guns and a couple are being driven a little bit harder than you would normally expect for DB fives.

This is mark Higgins rally driver and for the past few years stunt driver in other words he is one of the men that makes double-oh-seven look handy behind the wheel and after our passenger ride with him in one of the actual stunt cars used in the filming of no time to die we sat down with him to find out which is Mike on set well thank you very much chatting to us about this it must be an absolute dream job in many ways I mean getting to play James Bond in in a db5 yeah it is I mean like my first actual film ever was a bomb fell believe it or not so we started at the top and we started off as a body back on quantum I drove a defender I think on Skyfall and then I progressed to the DB 10 inspector and now no time to die with the DB 5 which is yeah it's pretty cool.

Yeah any of those cars over the years that have been particular favorites kind of stood out they all because obviously we'll get onto the car that we've got here today yeah in a bit but underneath there they all quite similar yeah no not really I mean I think the two Astin's really the DB 10 was a one-off build so that was very special but the the new DB 5 and the fact that we built a specific stunt car for it was great in it I think of all the cars it's the iconic Bond car isn't it so growing up as a kid to see that car and then drive it with a bit more power and a bit less weight and be able to drift it around was pretty good yeah so just describe to us what that well that car is well what we come up with because I think I think more for repeatability and being able to use a car and in quite tricky environments they built a specific car in a very short period of time it was a one-off build a lot of frame chassis.

We had approximately 300 horsepower engine with a thousand kilos so that's a perfect recipe for a rear-wheel drive car carbon fibre body and he looks identical but just drives a real little gem absolutely and what's it like being what's it like being on set I mean you're there for a long time I mean the nice thing with bond is it's become very much a family now as I say it's my fourth film it's the same people we use all the time everybody's really relaxed and chilled there's a lot of people so you've probably got 200 people around one little scene with all the different departments so there's you know I've come from a motorsport background.

Where you create your own pressure there's different pressures with filming you definitely don't to make it freely yourself or get it wrong especially when you're driving cars of a million pound plus so marieve airy different but you're just a very small part of a massive team really and there's no one thing that's more important than anything else the only problem is it might if I get it wrong it to show up a lot more than other people say mistakes and what I mean in terms of you presumably involved and the build-up to a scene in terms of saying what what you're happy happy or what sort of what you think it's possible and things like that with the car I mean we work.

We all work very closely together so the stunt coordinator ultimately discusses what's the scene is gonna be so that they'll come up the idea the stunt coordinator works out what can and can't be done they then liaised with the build of the car and then we test it fine-tune it if we have issues that we don't think are going to work or can't be done at the time will then work around it really the best we can and make it happen but this time coordinated we worked the guy Woodley Morrison on this one he's a very very good driver and sort of fantastic bike rider as well.

So his knowledge is very good of Motor Vehicles and we just work as a big team and it is very much as I know I keep saying it it's very much a team effort yeah yeah and and do you get to meet the stars at all have you met Daniel Craig yeah I've work with Daniel on all for now so we do a bit of driving work together he drives when he can and he's been really great on this film and again you just build relationships as you go on so I think he trusts me to do the cast of for him and I let him do the acting particular tractive mode so do you have to wear a mask or something like that to tone it down yeah yeah I'm doing that bit coming out of the sea you know I've let him do more of that now has there been any any particular moments any locations and he sort of any stunts that we might have seen in the films that you've been particularly sort of happy with sort of when you've seen their final product yes that's yeah a lot of the stunts very hard because what I'm actually doing.

What I'm seeing from the driving point the camera may be looking at something totally separate so when we get to the film it's as much as it's a surprise for us sometimes I mean I remember back on quantum that was gonna be a massive car chase 15 minutes and then it was all cut very very it was a fantastic chase yeah cuz it went down into the quarry yeah all through the quarry and we started on the bottom by the by the lake and came up and I in my head knew exactly how that chase is going to come out and film and then it's very very different and I now dude look at films in a different way because I'm looking how it's all be made but know this that we had some coast road parts but we don't even know what's gonna be used.

So it's hard for me to say you know after wait till the film comes down yeah absolutely and and is there anything from from a driving point of view as well sort of that you because obviously gets to get to drive a car what sunny looks like I'm not something it might be Pinewood but some of it presumably is on location very much yeah times when you've just thought wow you know I'm going to drive a car through this particular City kind of might be Rome or whatever city it must be pretty cool well I mean I think just drifting it about 80 90 miles an hour sideways past the Vatican that was pretty special you definitely do have to pinch yourself for the locations you get to there was a few places we had the db5 that we had to wait for the Sun to go down.

You got the helicopter up there shooting you and it's just you do actually feel a little bit bond you know there is that I keep singing that song has a little ending but yeah it's as I say growing up as a kid James Bond Aston Martin's yeah it's pretty special now I wasn't going to let mark have all the fun so I went and found a couple of the stunt cars one with damage and one without strap myself in headed out onto the Stowe circuit to see what they're like. This car is that like that city's famous for that it's already to drive erratically go to the rg2 there is American staff exactly and weighs about a thousand kilos 300 goes power whoa right to the rim.

A little bit a bear and I'm not surprised you're still very much a lot of engine rankings and orders that cost lifeguard are there actually the nice part of the corner it discover that's me lady sorry one side like sacrilege absolutely it's amazing actually an original db5 and the mother car this is what a thing James Bond is very lucky no mark against enemy belief. If you'd like to hear an extended version of that interview with Mark Higgins then we talked about all sorts of other things and you can find it on the car fiction podcast which is otherwise known as for the love of cars and it's available in all the usual podcast places to our check it out the names Catchpole henry Catchpole.