Aston Martin DB5 ‘No Time To Die’ review: Shrunken and stirred
Sean Connery and Roger Moore hold the joint-record for playing James Bond, with seven films apiece. Yet both are trumped by the Aston Martin DB5, which has nine movies to its name. Indeed, 007’s DB5 is up there with Herbie and the DeLorean Time Machine as perhaps the most famous four-wheeled film star of all.
Aston Martin recently built a run of 25 DB5 Goldfinger tribute cars, each priced at a cool £3.3 million. By comparison, the £108,000 asked for this two-thirds-scale DB5 Junior No Time To Die edition is almost pocket change – and it too comes with an arsenal of Q Branch gadgets, including pop-out machine guns and a smoke screen.
The DB5 Junior is hand-built at Bicester Heritage – a former RAF base in Oxfordshire – by The Little Car Company. “We get slightly offended when people describe our vehicles as toys,” says CEO Ben Hedley. “These are properly engineered little cars.” The range also includes a Bugatti Type 35 and Ferrari Testa Rossa, with a scaled-up, road-legal version of the Tamiya Wild One RC car due this summer.
Being Bond
Beneath its carbon fibre body, the downsized DB5 hides an aluminium honeycomb chassis and four 1.8kWh electric motors: good for 22hp and a top speed of 45mph. Suspension geometry is based on the Aston Martin original, while brakes are drilled discs with callipers from a Ducati superbike.
Officially, the car is designed for drivers aged 14 or older, but a learner mode limits it to 12mph and a range of 50 metres from the (slightly panicked) parent with the key fob.
Inside, Smiths gauges and Connolly leather add a touch of authentic Aston Martin, while a hidden panel beside the dashboard reveals some decidedly non-standard switches. I can almost hear Q’s voice in my head: “Need I remind you, 007, that you have a licence to kill, not to break the traffic laws”.
Guns and gadgets
I try out the guns first (admit it, you would too). Hold down a button and the headlamps retract – “a fiendishly difficult piece of engineering,” says Hedley – then two rotating mini guns emerge with a rat-a-tat soundtrack. If your enemy is in pursuit, another button releases a steady stream of smoke from the exhaust tailpipes. It’s the same dense, non-toxic gas used by cash collection vans in case of a robbery.
When the DB5 debuted in Goldfinger (1964), it had rotating number plates. For its most recent appearance in No Time To Die (2021), these were upgraded to switchable digital plates – as seen here. “Chris Corbould, the special effects expert on the Bond films, actually shared the software with us,” Hedley explains.
The final hidden gadget is a skid mode, which locks the front wheels to allow tyre-smoking getaways. However, I’ll need to visit Bicester’s on-site airfield to sample that. I grasp the wooden steering wheel, check the bullet-shaped mirrors, then glide away in effortless electric silence. All I need now is Xenia Onatopp in the passenger seat. Some chance.
Add Vantage
Like any electric car, the DB5 Junior is simple to drive, with two pedals and no gears to worry about. Its handling was tuned to emulate a modern Aston Martin Vantage, so it isn’t as taut and one-dimensional as a go-kart; there’s a progressiveness and real sense of sophistication here.
Don’t worry, though, this Aston Martin also needs little encouragement to go excitably, hilariously sideways. Acceleration is punchy and the 45mph maximum feels seriously swift when your backside is millimetres from the concrete.
The No Time To Die DB5 is impossible to justify on any rational level, yet equally impossible not to love. All I need now is the six-figure asking price and a big patch of land to drive it on. Know anyone with a hollowed-out volcano?
Tim Pitt writes for Motoring Research
PRICE: £108,000
POWER: 22hp
TOP SPEED: 45mph
BATTERIES: 4 x 1.8kWh
ELECTRIC RANGE: 60 miles
PRODUCTION: 125 cars