by Tom McCahill

A goodly number of misled car buffs are under the impression that the Ford-powered Lotus that Jim Clark drove to victory at Indianapolis was the automotive sensation of 1965. It wasn't. The screamer that hit the public where it lives turned up in an undressed whodunit called "Goldfinger" and, now, in an only-slightly-revised version, appears in the new Bondie named "Thunderball."

As everybody south of Point Barrow knows, these movies feature a beastly clever English shamus known as 007 (possibly his hat size), a gross or so of mostly naked broads and a car that is a real gasser. This bomb, especially outfitted for slick life as a pin-money $12,000 Aston Martin DB5. We have tested Astons on these pages before but never one quite like this.

The furry 007 mechanics put $50,000 worth of extras on their already-loaded DB5, which made the tub about as maneuverable as the Queen Mary outfitted with a pair of six-ft. oars. The Aston looks great in "Thunderball" but those crazy accessories added 2,000 lbs. to a small car's total weight. Sometimes in the wild movie scenes you can tell it. The car looks as lightfooted as 007 escaping down an alley with a grand piano on his back.

The Bond car, besides making appearances, proved a sensation in the AMF Monorail pavilion at the World's Fair, where sensations were as rare as hair on Robert Moses' head. One of our bright editors got the idea of testing the car, commissioned me agent 000 (you can see whose side he's not on) and dispatched a small crew, including a photographer, to the fairgrounds in the wee hours.

Actually, a naked gal painted gold made a bigger hit in "Goldfinger" than James Bond (who looks lousy in gold) so our editorial heads figured a gold girl should accompany us in a wild swirl around the fairgrounds. Veronica Erickson, a movie starlet who was born of British parents in Hong Kong and brought up there, got the assignment. Then a hot debate about which one was going to paint her gold resulted in a Mexican standoff. So we settled for Veronica in a gold bikini which, as our cover picture shows, is not a bad settlement. You don't often see anything stamped Made in Hong Kong that looks like that. A healthy girl. In reality, of course, the golden girl belonged to the movie "Goldfinger"; the car appears in both "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball." So our little cover production was a bit of both - sort of a Goldball. Or maybe a Thunderfinger.

At any rate, shortly after the sun chinned, our hearty little band of MI adventurers was taking the car out of the AMF pavilion for a fast tour inside the fences. For the benefit of our two Eskimo readers north of Point Barrow who may not be familiar with every last gadget on the 007 bucket, I will point out a few of the goodies. The jolliest of these is an ejector seat like those used in jet fighters. The control is in the gearshift knob. You press the button and - pouf! - you're alone. The passenger is tossed 40 ft. into the air after going through the roof panel which, luckily, is replaced easily. It's a nice rig for taking your mother-in-law riding.

The defense mechanisms include a matched set of Browning machine guns cleverly hidden behind the front sidelights and an oil ejector that dumps lube on the macadam, to make things unpleasant for following cars, especially around curves. If that doesn't work you can try your spike ejector or smoke-screen generator, or, if this unfriendly chap gets too close, a flip of the right switch will give you a tire cutter extending two ft. from your rear hub or ramming bumpers that jump out a foot and a half ahead of you. In a sentence, this James B. jalopy is wild, man, wild. It sticks together like the pyramids but, unfortunately, it also is almost as heavy and not much faster.

We finally got some pictures made with Veronica beside the Formica pavilion and then, when a broom truck with a flat tire passed us, we decided to bail out and test a full-blown DB5 without all the gadgets.

I phoned my old friend B. J. Corrigan, who is Bridgehampton's answer to Cary Grant italics and the astronauts, and also happens to run Bridgehampton race circuit. He said all right, come on out for a go with the "Thunderball" bomb on the great Bridgehampton course.

One chilly fall morning Mike Ashley, fresh from the cliffs of Dover, rolled into Corrigan's garage a hundred miles east of New York in a shiny unleashed Aston. This one was identical to the 007 car, except for the murder equipment. With Corrigan leading the way we headed for the track and began taking this $13,268 number (it had some extra goodies on it) apart.

Aston Martins are made in England at the rate of about a thou a year by David Brown, who owns practically everything in Blighty except those Crown Jewels, and we all know they're made of paste, anyway. Brown for years operated this little enterprise as a sort of unprofitable hobby but something went wrong and nasty rumor has it that he's making a profit on the cars nowadays. The problem is what to do with all that money. For one thing, Aston Martin has just announced and shown a new model called the DB6, which may be one number up from the DB5 but is the next thing to a Chinese copy of the car we tested. A bigger project that Brown has afoot - and one that is sure to use up a lot of these embarrassing profits - is the development of an entirely new Aston that would top out as a sporty 200 mph. If Brown tests out the prototype himself it could mean a fast solution to all his financial worries, in fact, all his worries of any kind.

Way back in 1951 we tested one of the first Astons ever seen in this country. We found it exceedingly fast (122 mph) but it had some handling characteristics we didn't like. At high speeds these early models developed road tramp and, though we were criticized severely for pointing this out, corrections were made almost immediately. Since those days the Aston has undergone many improvements and the price has more than doubled. If there is a finer GT car in the world today than the DB5 it would take a lot of doing to find it. This is a quality bucket from one end to the other and a real prestige piece for the heavy-money connoisseur.

Our test car with a four-liter, six-cylinder engine and twin overhead cams developed 280 hp. As this goes to press an even hotter mill is about to be offered as an option, rated at 325 hp. Our standard rig should be fast enough, however, for the conservative set since it can top 150 by about 4 mph and reach 100 from a standstill in 15.6 seconds. It has a five-speed syncromesh box with a 3.77 rear axle.

This bomb doesn't start to unwind until it is well past 60 even though you push 6,000 in each gear on the way up. For example, 3.1 seconds for 0 to 30 and 5.4 seconds for 0 to 50 are not outstanding. Neither is 7.3 for 0 to 60. But 15.6 for 0 to 100 is really flying. By American standards a four-liter engine is eyecup-size and almost 200 cu. in. smaller than our biggest. So the boys in England are accomplishing quite a bit with what we would call a small Six. The Yank specials built to do 150 mph are real beasts and about as gentle around town as galloping hiccups at a prayer meeting. This Aston is as docile as a puppy with a full tummy in traffic but a snarler when you give it a whip.

Many feel that the Bridgehampton circuit is the best in this country and they're right. Around the hardest bends and switchbacks the DB5 cornered as flat as a Swede's snore. This is a truly great road car that holds like a tax fine. It gets a bite and stays. The tail will drift out when pushed hard but it is smooth and controllable. Our whole crew took turns bending it around the course just because it was fun. With a lot of cars at comparable speeds my chums would have ended up in a sand bank or on their backsides. Through the years the Aston Martin styling has changed little. The car has been considered by many to be the best-looking sports rig ever to come out of England.

The steering is rack and pinion. The brakes are Girling disc all around, the fuel tank holds 22.8 American gallons and the body paneling is aluminum alloy. The frame is tubular steel. I was assured by Mike Ashley that three and a half cowhides were used in the upholstery and trim for one car. I failed to ask him how far a bull would go. One of the biggest pleasures to me was the instrument panel. All instruments are real and easy to read - none of this junky idiot-light stuff.

In summing up, with its 98-in. wheelbase and overall length of 182 in. the DB5 without James Bond at the wheel is one of the finest pieces of sporting equipment a man could want. It's almost worth marrying a mean but rich old dame to get one. And don't think it hasn't been done.

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