by No other movie car is as famous, as iconic and highly valued as the Aston Martin DB5, always and forever the ultimate James Bond car. Of the DB5s to have been used in the film franchise, there is one that is considered the holy grail – and it’s also been missing for decades.
On June 19, 1997, the original Aston Martin DB5 from the Goldfinger movie (1964) was stolen from a private hangar at Boca Raton Airport in Florida, U.S. The car was never retrieved and, perhaps worse, the case never solved: with no eyewitnesses and no clues left behind, including no signs of forced entry, it was as if it had simply disappeared into thin air.
That car was chassis number DP/216/1, one of the two DB5s driven by Sean Connery in the film. It was also “the effects car,” so it had all the features and the gear shown in the film, in addition to being fully functional. The other one, the “road car,” was a basic Aston Martin.
When it was stolen, DP/216/1 had been in the ownership of Hollywood memorabilia collector Anthony Pugliese III, who had bought it 1986 for $250,000 and instantly insured it for 16 times its value. Prior to that, it had belonged to various collectors, with its value and celebrity status increasing with each new transaction.
The theft turned DP/216/1 into a legend. For the past ten years, Christopher A. Marinello, chief executive of Art Recovery International, has been researching the disappearance in an attempt to track it down. In 2018, he was able to go on the record with his belief that the DB5 had not been drowned in the ocean on that night to collect the insurance, as one theory had it, but relocated to the Middle East.
His quest for what he calls his “white whale” is now documented on a new eight-part podcast called The Great James Bond Car Robbery, narrated by actress Elizabeth Hurley. It premiered on August 18, so you still have time to catch up on it.
As a teaser to the podcast, Marinello tells Esquire that he’s fairly positive the $25 million car is in the Middle East, as he’s been saying all along. “I’m of the impression the current possessor would like to show it off. I’ve had reports that it may have been lent to Bahrain and of it being in Kuwait. We’re focusing on the Middle East – possibly Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain – that general area,” he says.
