James Bond Aston Martin DB5 (silver) - CC04204S

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Marshall agrees: “You’d think Marcel was the only one who worked there.” Their feelings are justified where the Aston was concerned. WHAT’S THE best car in the world? That is easy: it’s the Ferrari 458 Italia. It’s beautiful and exciting and occupies a perfect central position on a spectrum representing at one end total transport pragmatism and at the other unusable and unaffordable exoticism. The 458 is in the sweet spot.

Corgi's desire to include ever-more exciting features was almost feverish. Opening doors, sliding seats, carefully detailed interiors… the list of innovations goes on and on. And who can forget Corgi's smooth ‘Glide-O-Matic’ working suspension or legendary jewelled headlights? However, the real breakthrough came with the impact of film and television. All of a sudden, the vehicles we saw on the small screen and at the cinema were top of our lists, resulting in a swathe of amazing Corgi Toys such as the Batmobile, Saint’s Volvo and of course James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 with its amazing array of gadgets. This was a dream toy for kids of all ages and sizes. It’s only issue was its colour. ‘ Why was it painted gold’ instead of silver like in the movie? Apparently, Corgi’s marketing team didn’t like the proposed silver finish from the movie and decided to paint it gold to reflect the movie’s title instead. Release Welcome to the latest edition of Corgi Die-cast Diaries, your regular blog review of all the news, updates and topical stories from the captivating world of Corgi die-cast model collecting. The ‘as seen on TV’ tag was clearly an enormous draw among toy-car buyers, so Corgi brilliantly exploited the goldmine awaiting a successful collaboration with 007. The best clips on Driving Video: Ford Supervan EV races up Pikes Peak Video: Ferrari SF90 XX walkaround Giorgetto Giugiaro, legendary car designer › More here...

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Your right to cancel within 14 days. Our terms are wholly in accordance with The Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 and your statutory rights are not affected. Corgi Model Club models are exact facsimiles of original Corgi Toys. When in mint condition and with their original box, original examples can fetch hundreds of Pounds at auction, making collecting Corgi Toys of the 1960s and early 1970s out of reach for many of us. That is, until now! It is our mission to make collecting Corgi Toys as affordable as possible – introducing these fantastic models to a new generation of die-cast model collectors. People I know of my age who are now in a position finally to buy “a nice car” are inevitably drawn to Astons. Some of it is to do with Britishness, some of it with Bond fantasies, but largely, I suspect, it’s the influence of this most iconic of toy cars. Without Corgi we might not have Aston Martin. In fact, the ejection of the baddie from a Corgi Bond DB5 is a quantum event. He is in the seat and then he is somewhere else altogether — there being no discernible transitional phase between the two states. Where did he go? Into the vacuum cleaner. If art imitates the experience of life, then the film should be re-edited so the baddie is ejected by Sean Connery’s 007 and then finished off by a Hoover the size of a skyscraper.

The popularity of the Bond Corgi is simple to analyse. It wasn’t just the association with the film Goldfinger, and it certainly wasn’t fidelity. It’s the wrong colour, for a start. Apparently Corgi’s marketing team didn’t like the proposed — and cinematically authentic — silver finish because it looked too much like the raw zinc alloy of the unpainted body, so a hasty decision was made to paint it gold as a nod to the film’s title. One of the first suggestions offered was a range of models which rarely receive much attention here on Diecast Diaries, but could hardly be more perfect for this time of year. This one was more in relation to an appropriate gift for us to give to younger members of our family, but models which are most definitely designed to stand the test of time. We all know that we wouldn't let inquisitive young minds loose with the latest limited edition model addition to our collections, but we would love to see them playing for hours on end with a range of models designed specifically for them.In the end I settled on six cars that you would expect to find in such a show — among them the Ford Model T and the VW Beetle — and six more that I believe deserve greater recognition, including Josef Ganz’s Standard Superior (or what’s left of it) and, well, the Honda Civic. And then, in a darkened antechamber, I displayed the car that I believed, above all others, advanced the state of motoring: #the13thcar. I chose the Corgi James Bond Aston Martin DB5. (It’s item No 261 in the 1965 Corgi catalogue, if anyone’s interested.) My first job was designing a plastic roof for a horsebox,” he says. “But I loved experimenting; I designed a lorry with a working tail-lift in 1962 and, although they never made it, it got the attention of [Mettoy founder] Philipp Ullmann.” One of the most famous cars in the world thanks to its association with James Bond, the Aston Martin DB5 was first released in 1963. A luxury grand tourer built for long distance yet high speed driving, the car was evolved from the Aston Martin DB4 Series V with the addition of a new and more powerful engine constructed entirely from aluminium. What I really think about... supercars, America, foreigners, car launches, Top Gear, the battle of the sexes and cars " This stunning model may well be a must for all Bond fans, but represents a significant achievement for our development team, a tooling design intentionally modified to include the missing door, but without rendering the tooling unusable in its usual format. Presented in a luxurious collectors box, the model also features a representation of the damage inflicted on Bond's car during that thrilling opening film sequence, with Bond exacting his revenge by systematically dispatching the lot of them.