2015 Aston Martin DB10 – The Spectre Car
The DB10 was conceived and developed for the 24th James Bond movie, “Spectre,” and marks AM’s 50th anniversary of working with EON Productions on Bond films. Ten cars were built – two had roof-mounted pods with dual controls, four were stunt cars and four were ‘hero’ cars, like this one, that were cosmetically perfect. Of the ten, only the ‘heroes’ were cars that might be considered road legal, and only two were left completely as supplied from Aston Martin. The others were modified for different moviemaking tasks or shots. One of those four was recently sold by Christie’s for $3.5 million to benefit the non-profit, Medicines sans Frontieres.
The project all started when director Sam Mendes was discussing with Aston’s Merek Reichman the car he wanted for Daniel Craig in the next Bond film. At the time, AM was secretly working on the next generation of the Vantage. Merek and Sam were touring the design facility when an early concept sketch caught Sam’s eye. He pointed cryptically at it and said, “That’s what I want.” Not exactly what Reichman expected.
The concept would require an awful lot of work to become a Bond car, and Aston had not really planned on putting that much effort into a car just for the film. But the story has it Mendes wanted the car in the sketch, so off they went to create a new body over a stretched and widened V8 Vantage chassis. The body was built by MultiMatic of Canada, Aston’s goto fabricator for its carbon fiber bodies.
Of the styling, Reichman says the DB10 was thought of from the beginning to be the modern interpretation of the DB5, a dark, athletic predator in line with Daniel Craig’s edgy, raw characterization of Bond. The front end does, and is intended to, imitate a shark’s face and mouth. As a result, it’s also the lowest nose on an Aston ever made.
I saw this car at the Aston Martin Estate in 2015 before the movie was released. It was interesting to note the interior was blacked out because EON Productions didn’t want anyone to know what the inside of the car looked like. After seeing the film, I wasn’t quite sure why they did this unless the scene they were thinking of ended up on the editing room floor at the last minute. The outside of the car is stunning to say the least. The whole front end more than accomplishes that sinister, shark-like feeling while the rear is sleek, abrupt, muscular – still echoing the unmistakable feeling here is something beautiful, powerful and dangerous. It was a very successful design that kept the public on edge for the next production Aston Martin, the DB11, and was a strong foretelling of the next Vantage that came in December, 2017.
