After being lost for over 24 years the most famous car in the world has been
found. Or at least, we think it has. Thought to be worth 25 million dollars,
the original Aston Martin DB5 used in the classic James Bond film Goldfinger
was stolen from an airport in Florida in 1997 and has never been seen since.
Until now. In a new years’ surprise,
investigators working on the case announced they have finally tracked it down to an
undisclosed location in the Middle East. But how does the most famous car in the
world go missing in the first place? Well, strap into your ejector seats because
we’re going to talk about one of the most mysterious art thefts of the 20th century,
involving possibly the single most valuable and famous piece of movie memorabilia of all time.
Let’s start at the beginning, in 1964. Sean Connery’s James Bond
has taken the world by storm, and his third film appearance as the character
introduced audiences to the now iconic Aston Martin DB5 and its gadgets.
You’ll be using this Aston Martin DB5 with modifications.
Eon Productions actually used four DB5s used in the making of Goldfinger. Two of them
were used in promotional materials, while the other two actually appeared in the movie.
The first had the chassis number DB5/1486/R and was known as the road car.
This appeared in the exterior driving scenes of the film.
This car later had some gadgets installed in order to promote the movie, but at the time of filming
Goldfinger it was just a normal car, and does not appear with any gadgets in the movie itself.
No, those appear on the second car, chassis number DP/2161/1,
and this was known as the gadget car. It was modified by special effects legend
John Stears with all of the classic Bond gadgets we know and love.
And engage and fire the passenger ejector seat.
Ejector seat? You’re joking! I never joke about my work 007.
Both of these cars reappeared in the fourth Bond movie Thunderball, but once filming was finished,
their gadgets were removed, leaving the vehicles in more or less stock standard condition.
It’s hard to believe now, but even though James Bond was already a huge phenomenon at the time,
the concept of movie memorabilia hadn’t really caught on.
There also wasn’t much thought on the part of the filmmakers that any of the original
props would need preserving. So both cars were sold in 1968.
The 1486/R road car sold to the philanthropist Jerry Lee
for today’s equivalent of about $95,000. It remained in his private possession until 2010
when he sold it for $4.6 million to car collector Harry Yeaggy, who still owns it today.
But we’re interested in the gadget car. 2161/1.
This was also sold in 1968, to some guy from Kent called Gavin,
who just used it as his private vehicle. He put it up for sale again in 1969 because
it was getting too small for his children! Clearly he didn’t get a good enough offer for it,
because he had a company refit it with the gadgets, and managed to sell it in 1971 to
Richard Losee – a car collector from Utah – who also bought Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce.
The car stayed in his private collection until 1986, during which time the only
interesting thing it did was get driven by Roger Moore in The Cannonball Run,
which is an excellent movie, by the way. I must warn you! I’m Roger Moore!
Anyway, Losee was retiring so sold the DB5 for today’s equivalent of
$700,000 to one Anthony Pugliese III, a property developer from Florida.
Pugliese had a habit of spending his fortune on pop culture memorabilia
and has owned, among other things, the Indiana Jones whip, some of Charlie Chaplin’s canes,
Christopher Reeves Superman costume, and Oddjob’s hat – another iconic Goldfinger prop that he
acquired in the same auction as the DB5. For ten years, the car remained in Pugliese’s
possession, until 18 June 1997. Or, more specifically, some time
between 4pm on June 18 and 7am on June 19, when there was just one guard on night duty
at the Boca Raton Airport in Florida. The airport was a popular spot for Florida’s
elite to store cars, yachts, and jets, and it was here that the DB5 sat in a secure,
locked hanger at the northern end of the airport – the end not patrolled by the night-watchman.
To gain access, the thieves would have had to get through the airport’s perimeter fence, cut through
some rubber moulding and a padlock in order to open the hanger door, disable the alarm, and
somehow bring in a truck to move the car with. If this sounds unbelievable, you have to remember
that this was 1997 – well before 9/11 changed the game for airport security.
At the time, the Boca Raton Airport was not particularly busy; it didn’t
even have an air traffic control tower. Even today, the fence around those storage
hangers doesn’t look that much more robust than it was in the 90s.
Anyway, once the thieves got into the hanger, they and the car vanished into the night, leaving
behind only some tyre marks on the floor. And until very recently, those tyre tracks were
the last trace of the world’s most famous car for almost twenty-five years.
When the theft was first discovered, suspicion initially fell on Pugliese himself. After all, he
was paid out $4.2 million in insurance money. A month after the theft, an anonymous tip off even
claimed that Pugliese had arranged the theft to claim the insurance money and had moved the car
to some of his warehouses in New Jersey. Another theory is that it was dumped into the
ocean to guarantee it would never be found. But as we have seen, Pugliese is an avid pop
culture collector and this would seem like an uncharacteristic move.
No evidence has ever been found linking him to the theft. The warehouses were searched
by police and nothing was found, and he was ruled out as a suspect.
As he pointed out himself, if he needed the money, he could have just sold the car.
No, the most widely accepted theory is that the car was moved from the hanger using a flatbed or a
tow truck, and loaded onto a cargo plane somewhere – possibly even at Boca Raton airport itself.
Interviews by police, the insurance company, and journalists both at the time of the theft and
since have confirmed that the airport didn’t maintain an
active record of flights in and out. Not just that, but the airport was in a
region of uncontrolled airspace that was well known by drug runners and other criminals.
So as crazy as it sounds now, in 1997, it’s entirely plausible that a plane large enough
to carry a car landed and took off in the middle of the night and no one noticed – or at least,
no one had any evidence of it. And once it had taken off,
that plane could have taken James Bond’s DB5 almost anywhere in the world.
But however the theft itself happened, the hunt began, and for over a decade it
has been led by Christopher Marinello, the CEO and founder of Art Recovery International.
Over the course of his career his organisation has recovered more than half a billion dollars’
worth of stolen and looted artwork. But the James Bond DB5 remained elusive.
And in the time since it was stolen, the value of movie memorabilia has skyrocketed.
Luke Skywalker’s lightsabre from A New Hope fetched nearly half a million dollars back
in 2017 while Marilyn Munroe’s dress from The Seven Year Itch was sold in
2011 for over 4 and a half million dollars. But putting that to one side, stolen artwork also
tends to increase in value as well. If a piece is thought to be lost,
it becomes rare and exclusive, but also has a more interesting history that can be used
to drive up the price. The Mona Lisa wasn’t very well known until its theft in 1911.
Finally, classic cars have also become increasingly attractive to collectors,
regardless of any association with a movie franchise as iconic as James Bond.
A 1959 Aston Martin was sold for 22 and a half million dollars in 2017 while a 1962 Ferrari
fetched $48 million just a year later. Combine all of this, and the missing DB5 is
now estimated to be worth $25 million. This means that the car is not only one of
the most valuable movie props in the world, it’s one of the most
valuable pieces of lost artwork, period. And after all this time, it may finally have
been found. On 31 December 2021, news broke that Marinello’s investigators,
following a very credible tip off, were confident that it had been tracked down.
Art Recovery International issued a carefully worded statement saying
that a witness had spotted the iconic DB5 in a “private setting,” and that someone
had been able to verify that the serial number matched that of the missing car. DP/2161/1.
But the details have remained frustratingly vague. Even the country the car was found
in has not been named, with ARI simply saying that Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain
are “particular areas of interest.” The reason for the secrecy is because the
current owner of the car is not believed to have known the car was stolen when they acquired it,
and ARI does not want to risk revealing any identifying or incriminating information
that might jeopardise its safe return. Marinello said that “I’m hopeful that the
possessor will come forward voluntarily before I have to make an announcement.
It’s my policy to give possessors of stolen and looted objects every
opportunity to do the right thing. I think the [possessor] should make every
effort to have a discreet confidential discussion about how we clear the title
to this iconic vehicle.” So things are looking good.
Assuming the car in question is in fact real and not a very elaborate fake of the original,
it seems like we now know where it is and one way or another it will be recovered.
2022 marks the 60th anniversary of the cinematic James Bond films.
What a fantastic diamond jubilee present it would be for the most famous car in the world,
and the embodiment of the James Bond films, to be returned safe and sound after all these years.
---------- As always, sources for this
video are listed in the description and I will happily post corrections in a pinned comment.
But I want to particularly highlight Dave Worrall’s excellent book ‘The Most Famous Car
in the World’ and the ‘Great James Bond Car Robbery’ podcast.
Both of these sources go into far, far more detail than I could ever fit into a
YouTube video so please make sure you check them out if you want to learn more,
although you may have to contact your local library for a copy of the book
because it’s no longer in print. If you stumbled upon this video through
the wily ways of the Youtube algorithm, then I usually just talk about movies.
But if you want to see some of my other videos where I actually,
you know, did some research, then you might enjoy the funniest video I have made,
which looks at the hilarious Russian Lord of the Rings movie,
or for something else that’s James Bond related, you might enjoy this video
where I talk in way too much detail about how the Michael Bay action classic
The Rock is actually a James Bond movie. If you have made it through to the end of this
video, I promise you’ll like some of the other things I’ve made, so check them out and if you
like them, please let me know by subscribing. Thanks for watching.