| KIT: | Doyusha 1/24 Aston Martin DB.5 |
| KIT #: | ? |
| PRICE: | $ |
| DECALS: | includes 007 markings |
| REVIEWER: | Dan Lee |
| NOTES: |
| HISTORY |
Aston Martin was a company founded in 1913 to build racers and luxury cars. The early Aston Martin cars were successful on the track, but not financially as the company struggled going thru several ownership changes. Eventually, Aston Martin dropped building race cars and got into building high end touring cars.
In 1947, the company was bought by David Brown and started the classic era of the DB (not coincidentally the initials of the boss) line. The DB3 and DB5 series of cars proved to be the most well known of the DB series due to literary work of an author named Fleming who wrote about the adventures of some British government guy named Bond, James Bond. Despite its successes in the 60s, Aston Martin struggled in the 70s and was eventually bought by Ford.
Here are the real Specs of the Aston Martin DB5 (courtesy of Wikipedia)
Only 1021 DB5s were ever manufactured in several distinct models.
Much of the info courtesy of Wikipedia
| THE KIT |
The
Aston Martin DB5 was the most famous of all the Aston Martins thanks to the
James Bond movie, Goldfinger. The DB5, like the Vodka Martini, will always be
linked to James Bond. It might have to do something with the Q built equipment
like tire shredders, oil slick, ejection seat, bulletproof screen and (what I
want fire every time someone stupidly cuts me off) a pair of forward firing .30
caliber machineguns.
This particular Doyusha kit is the non James Bond version so one would believe it did not contain all the goodies from that particular kit. I talked it over with the car experts at the local hobby store and he stated that this is the same kit as the James Bond version minus the Bond bits (which can be easily scratch built.) When you open up the box, you realize he wasn’t kidding. The decal sheet contains everything needed to make the Bond GPS like moving map display and the car body contains a cut out for the ejection seat.
The kit contains one white plastic chassis, one black plastic piece for the undercarriage, one decal sheet, one clear sprue with seven pieces, one chrome plated sprue of 28 pieces, one rubber sprue containing 10 pieces (4 tires and 6 bushings) and 1 black plastic sprue of 25 pieces. The parts are fairly clear of flash and look decent (I have no comment about fit.)
| CONCLUSIONS |
I’m not a gearhead in real life or in my choice of models, but I like this car and tried several times to buy the kit of the James Bond version on eBay (I want the car, but not for $70+ USD winning bid price.) About a couple of weeks after the last failed attempt, I wandered thru the Local Hobby Store and found a “standard” DB5 on the shelf for a price much lower than what I was (stupidly) willing to pay and bought it.
This kit looks like a DB5 and has enough bits to allow you to make a standard DB5 or to modify into the James Bond version. As one might guess, I’m leaning strongly towards the James Bond version. Considering how expensive these cars are, this is about as close as I’m going to get to owning one.
January 2007
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