Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin have gone to town with their special edition cars celebrating Goldfinger, the third James Bond film, which came out 60 years ago.
60 years ago, James Bond and Auric Goldfinger transfixed cinema goers in Goldfinger, in which a gold-obsessed super-villain plans to detonate a nuclear device in Fort Knox. The reason for doing so is in order to inflate the value of his own gold; and while you can’t help feeling that there are easier ways to make money, this is how Goldfinger sees the world. After all, even when it comes to bumping off a meddlesome secret agent, he couldn’t help but overcomplicate matters.
It’s a trait which gives Bond and Goldfinger something in common, actually, since when it comes to getting around Bond eschews a nice sensible hatchback in order to drive around in a fancy, bullet-proof Aston Martin DB5.
The rest, of course, is cinema history — and so embedded in the collective conscious that it seems completely reasonable for Aston Martin to release a special edition golden car, the Goldfinger DB12.
Not to be outdone, Rolls-Royce have decided to have their own fun — and this is no shoe-horning or bandwagon jumping, for keen 007 fanatics will probably remember that the car Goldfinger drives to his golf match against Bond is actually a Rolls-Royce — specifically, a 1937 Phantom III Sedanca de Ville, which the villain uses to smuggle gold by replacing the original body panels with 18ct gold.
GOLDFINGER © 1964 Danjaq, LLC and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved. Picture via Rolls-Royce
The 2024 Goldfinger Rolls-Royce is a very different best to the original: it’s a one-off edition commissioned by one of the Goodwood-based company’s customers, and it’s full of features which blur the lines between film, fantasy and reality.
Take the gold bar in the centre console, for example: it is genuinely a solid 18-carat gold bar in the shape of a ‘Speedform’.
The car also has picnic tables (for the rear seat passengers) which include fictional map of Fort Knox bullion reserve, created in 22-carat gold inlay.
The picnic tables use an image from Goldfinger by Ian Fleming, © copyright Ian Fleming Publications Ltd 1959. Picture via Rolls-Royce
There is a 007 logo projector, a golden golf club fitted inside the boot lid, Harlequin umbrellas, and the stars in the Rolls’s ‘Starlight headliner’ (or the inside of the roof, to you and me) match the constellation above the Furka pass on the date that the famous scene was shot in 1964.
It’s a project that ‘really invigorated our team of creatives, giving them the freedom to explore the reaches of their imagination,’ according to Rolls-Royce chief executive Chris Brownridge.
And apparently, for the car’s buyer, the machine itself was just the start: ‘The creativity extended far beyond the making of the motor car, as we curated extraordinary experiences for the client and their family, all while staying true to the spirit of the Goldfinger theme,’ adds Rolls’s regional director Boris Weletzky.
Still not impressed? Rolls-Royce even managed to buy the original numberplate, AU1, as used on Goldfinger’s car in the film.
As for how much it costs? Like any good MI6 agent, Rolls-Royce know how to keep a secret. But they did confirm that three years of work went in to this one-off edition, and that it used more gold than they’ve ever put in a car before.
So let’s put it this way: Goldfinger’s original filming budget was US$3 million — and we’d suspect that this car came in comfortably on the high side of that.
Just two questions remain to be pondered, then. First, what on earth is the insurance premium like for a car like this?
And second, is Goldfinger still the best of the Bond films? It’s evidently up there… but I’d always vote for From Russia With Love.
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