James Bond’s DB5 has a Little Secret

Aston Martin’s DB5 is a classic and outrageously valuable car. It’s the type of thing that we’d be afraid to breathe around for fear of besmirching it’s English elegance with our filthy colonial malaise. But it’s also James Bond’s car, which means that it gets additional cool points in exchange for a far, far shorter lifespan than anything with a similar amount of clout would expect. So of course, you’d imagine they’d use a substitute in Skyfall. The interesting part is how they did it.

Instead of using a full-scale model or pure CGI, they used 3D printed miniatures at a 1:3 scale. Each one model was assembled out of 18 pieces and was built around a metal frame just like a real DB5. Even the paint and the chrome are the same as they are on the real car. With the help of movie magic, it’s these little guys that get shot up and set on fire instead of the real deal.

Obviously this is much cheaper than using an actual DB5, but model car fans might want hesitate before throwing money at their screens. One of the replica’s recently went to auction for nearly $100,000. If you don’t mind spending nearly as much as you would on a new Vantage, then this might be worth it.

Hopefully though we’ll see awesome replicas like this available for the common man as 3-D printing technology progresses. Until then, we’ll make do with our plebeian matchbox miniatures.

via[Autoblog.nl]