James Bond's Aston Martin Vanquish from the 2002 film Die Another Day was auctioned away at Bonham's over the weekend. The winning bid was £144,500 (that's $275,648 to us Yanks). Some might say that the money would be better spent on a brand spanky new Vanquish, which "only" sets you back $255,000 by comparison.
It's a compelling argument on the surface, but really, the Bond car's machine guns, grille-mounted heat-seeking missiles, dual shotguns, ejector seat, and handy cloaking/invisibility mode are easily worth the extra 20 grand. Road ragers who direct their animosity toward this car's new owner do so at their peril.
[Source: PistonHeads]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JC Whitless @ Aug 9th 2006 4:12PM
"But will you be able to shoot throught he instruction manual?"
Paul @ Aug 9th 2006 4:44PM
If i remember correctly they took out the AM's engine and put in a chevy small block to fit in the machine guns and such for the movie.
DJ @ Aug 9th 2006 5:23PM
I wonder how much of this car sold in the auction actually appeared in the movie. Because in the movie, the windscreen was shot out and hundreds of gallons of water poured inside. Once leather and wool carpets get soaked, they're pretty much ruined,,,and tend to smell rather bad.
Hope the buyer got an extended warranty too.......
CJ @ Aug 9th 2006 5:29PM
Does this one have the AWD the movie MI:6 goes stuffed into the stunt vehicle for the ice driving?
&& @ Aug 9th 2006 5:55PM
Did they let the buyer know it has a mustang engine in it? Or will he have to find out the hard way...
JN @ Aug 9th 2006 5:57PM
I remember reading an article about the cars they used in the movie awhile back in Car and Driver or something. Basically they built a few Astons's using the AWD drive train and engine from a Ford Explorer for the ice chase scenes. Since thats the only time you see the guns and rockets in view, does that mean someone paid +255K for whats essentially an Aston Martin kit car with an Exlorer drivetrain? Or did they just sell the regular old car with Brosnans fingerprints on it for extra 20K? Heh, sounds like a sucker to me.
mxs @ Aug 9th 2006 6:45PM
Think some people got mixed up or didn't bother to fact check. Pretty sure that car was auctioned off a couple years back. Saw the same thing on Google News this morning which had it listed as a recent article.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=Bonhams%20Aston%20Martin%20Sale%20bond&btnG=Search&sa=N&tab=wn
The article is dated 5-19-04. http://www.mi6.co.uk/sections/articles/bond_20_vanquish_for_sale.php3?t=dad&s=dad
Search on Bonhams website, it was Sale 11093 - The Aston Martin Sale, 8 May 2004, lot #217.
mxs @ Aug 9th 2006 6:48PM
Looks like I got mixed up as well, this is the link to the right article: http://www.mi6.co.uk/news/index.php?itemid=1381&catid=1
The other one was another Vanquish up for auction in 2003.