270 James Bond Aston Martin DB5: the first and last

These two James Bond Aston Martins came into stock today. By chance they happened to be the very first and very last of the 270 editions. It has been a while since I wrote about these and I have learned a bit more since then too, mostly from an excellent resource created by someone in France whose name I presume is Laurent Clausse and this is the link to his site in acknowledgement of his efforts.

I had previously listed three types of 270 in my catalogue. Now I think there should be five, each of which is clearly identifiable and worth looking out for. The first two remain the same but I have noticed that the tyre slasher version with gold bumpers can have a circular or oval section on the base to produce one extra type. The other is to note the base differences on the Whizzwheels version which can be grey or silver.

So here are the main differences, and the dates when they were produced. You'll see that some had a noticeably shorter lifespan than others. Luckily, most sellers are unaware of the differences and so you may well manage to pick up a quite rare edition at a reasonable price. 

Type 1: Early 1968 - mid 1969
Tyre slashers, silver bumpers, base has a circular section at the rear, grey base.

Type 2: mid 1969 - end 1975
as before but with gold bumpers.

Type 3: 1976
as before but with an oval shape on the base

Type 4: early 1977 only
Whizzwheels, grey base

Type 5: early 1977 - early 1978
Whizzwheels, silver base.

Here are the bases for those illustrated above. You'll see the obvious different shapes at the rear and the two different base colours.

There are also wheel differences. A few very early models had a wire wheel that was less 'see-through' with a quite 'filled-in' inner side. Most models you'll encounter, however, will have the more 'see-through' type. I haven't yet had one of the 270s with type A wheels but will illustrate the difference when I can. The model below has a Type B wheel.

There is also a Type C wheel, with distinctly different pattern of wire wheels which appear to come off the centre at an angle. These, again, I don't have, but I can illustrate below.

I don't know how these three types are distributed across the three 270s with wire wheels. The Frenchman suggests that type A was fitted to type 1 (silver bumpers) but clearly my example above shows that this was not necessarily the case for all! My guess is that you'll find all three types across the range, type A mostly on the silver bumper types, type B on all of them and type C mainly on the later ones.

After May 1978 the dreadful 1:36 scale stuff came out which I do not propose to deal with at all. Corgi did, however, even from the Far East, continue to produce some excellent 1:43 scale models which are very similar to the familiar models we know. Indeed, you may still be able to find a new silver or gold one today! I shall write about the post-1978 editions another day.

As you'll see, these Bond Aston Martins can be complicated. Be careful to check what you're buying. Many are now being restored too with some very expert work not always easy to detect (although the best people do tell you!)