This highly collectible one-third scale model is unique as the only gold model in existence, created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Goldfinger. The third film in the James Bond series, Goldfinger (1964) saw the introduction of a new car for Sean Connery’s Bond – the Aston Martin DB5, signaling the start of a relationship which spans eleven Bond films and nearly 50 years of cinema history. Although Ian Fleming had placed Bond in a DB Mark III in the novel, the DB5 had just been introduced by Aston Martin in 1963 and the decision was made to use the company’s latest car. The car used in the film was the original DB5 prototype, with another standard car used for stunts. Production designer Ken Adam and engineer John Stears specially adapted the prototype Aston Martin DB5 coupe to reflect MI5’s Q branch customisations, installing a myriad of 007 gadgets including a bulletproof screen, revolving number plates and Browning twin machine guns hidden behind the sidelights.

The iconic DB5 has become synonymous with Bond, going on to appear in Thunderball (1965), GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Casino Royale (2006) and Skyfall (2012). The same car with registration BMT 216A was used again in the following film, Thunderball, where it was equipped with two rear-facing water cannons for Bond's escape from Colonel Jacques Bouvar's château. The DB5 reappeared thirty years later with Pierce Brosnan as Bond in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, sporting a new number plate – BMT 214A. Following the series' reboot in 2006, a further DB5, with Bahamian registration 56526, made an appearance in Casino Royale, in which Bond wins villain Alex Dimitrios' left-hand drive Aston Martin in a game of poker.

The original Aston Martin DB5 with registration BMT 216A returned in 2012's Skyfall. Pursued by Raoul Silva, Bond proceeds to a London warehouse to swap the government car he had used in the rescuing of M with the Aston Martin DB5. The pair then travel to Bond's ancestral home, Skyfall Lodge, and use the vehicle's concealed weaponry to stage a defense of the building. The car is subsequently destroyed by heavy machine gun fire from a helicopter belonging to Silva. Rather than damage a full-size DB5 for the scene, one-third scale replica models were used and destroyed.

The replica models were designed using 3D scanned parts from the original full-size DB5 used in Skyfall. Using the latest 3D printing technologies, Propshop broke the 3D model car down into parts, that were then printed individually and put together seamlessly in the workshop by skilled prop-makers. Skyfall was the first film production to employ 3D printing technologies to create scale models to this detail which, unlike with traditional methods, are exact copies of the original used on screen. The car’s body and features were lovingly finished by hand, to the highest level of detail.

Click here to learn more about this unique one-third scale model with gold-plated detail of James Bond's Aston Martin DB5.