My first recollection of James Bond was a birthday treat visit to see a double bill of Dr No and Diamonds Are Forever with my father and a couple of school friends back in the mid 1970s. I don’t recall much of the day, just the sheer awe and wonder of the experience. It was from that day that I became totally hooked on everything Bond.
I had, as my most favoured toy, a silver die-cast model with more gadgets than you could shake a stick at. This, I now know, was Corgi's “New” James Bond Aston Martin DB5, model number 270. What I did not appreciate at the time was that the word “New” stamped on this model referred to it being the second James Bond DB5 that Corgi had produced and that it would become known as the most famous car of all time.
These pages are dedicated to my formative memories of this iconic Bond car, rekindled some 40 years later, on a chance visit to a collectors' fair and a bric-a-brack store in a local market. This is my story, told with the help of those who have followed this path before, of Corgi and my favourite James Bond car, the Aston Martin DB5.
