n the early Bond stories Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey Bentley 4½ Litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger . [ 162 ] After Bond's car was written off by Hugo Drax in Moonraker , Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series. [ 163 ] During Goldfinger , Bond was issued with an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels. [ 163 ]
The Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage , [ 164 ] during the 1980s, the V12 Vanquish [ 164 ] and DBS [ 165 ] during the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit ; [ 166 ] the BMW Z3 , [ 167 ] BMW 750iL [ 167 ] and the BMW Z8 . [ 167 ] He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus, amongst others. [ 168 ]
Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston Martin DB5 , first seen in Goldfinger ; [ 169 ] it later featured in Thunderball , GoldenEye , Tomorrow Never Dies , Casino Royale and Skyfall . [ 170 ] [ 171 ] The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an auction in the US for $2,090,000 to an unnamed European collector. [ 172 ]