> >From: Dan Parslow
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Visited the Keswick Motor Museum in Cumbria. Saw James Bond's Aston,
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> I'm also wondering about "Emma'a Elan".
[. . .]
> Makes you think the following:
>
> 4) Like most other TV/Movie cars, there was never just one, but many -
> thus allowing several current owners to simultaneously claim that they
> own "the" car.
Likewise, there was an article in Autoweek several years ago that
detailed some of the history of the various Aston Martins used in
Goldfinger. There were, I think, three different whole cars used for
different scenes in the picture. At least one had all the gadgets --
the extendable knock-off spinners, the machine guns, the bulletproof
rear window, and of course the ejection seat. ("You're *joking*, Q."
"I never joke.") As is to be expected in the motion picture biz, they
used different cars depending on what the scene required. This makes
any claims about being the "real" James Bond Aston Martin suspect, as
there were several documented cars.
I saw at least one of them when I was a kid, when the movie was new.
The placard associated with the car said that it cost $50,000 to make
the car for the movie. This is significant because $50,000 was also
the cost of a then-new, Le Mans-winning Ford GT40. This was back when
you could get new MGBs and TR4s for between $2500 and $3000, just to
put it in perspective.
As a completely non-British observation on movie cars, we moved to
southern California just after the filming of Disney's "The Love Bug."
The Disney Studios are clearly visible from the Ventura Freeway as it
goes out toward the Burbank airport, a regular destination for us as
my dad was doing lots of travel at the time. My brother and I were
constantly amused by the presence of what appeared to be *hundreds*
of white VW Beetles with "53" painted on them. Of course, some of
them were only partially there, if you recall the final scene of the
movie where the car detaches itself at Riverside Raceway so that Dean
Jones can beat the wicked banker John Tomlinson. It's a *silly* movie
even if you willingly suspend your disbelief, but there are some
great vintage sports-car and race-car shots, with generally less
carnage than the hard-to-watch-without-flinching "Viva Las Vegas."
(Hint: don't watch that movie if you're restoring an XK-140 and
wish you had a nicer one to start with; it's hard enough for those
of us who just *wish* we had an XK-140 to see one go end over end
down the side of a hill and burst into flames...)
--Scott "And I *still* can't forgive Connery for stuffing the Aston" Fisher
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