Thunderball (1965) is the fourth spy film in the James Bond series after Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger, and the fourth to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.
James Bond - MI6 agent 007 and sometimes simply '007' - attends the funeral of Colonel Jacques Bouvar, a SPECTRE operative. Bouvar is alive and disguised, but Bond identifies him. Following him to a château, Bond fights and kills him, escaping using a jetpack and Aston Martin DB5.
The Aston Martin DB5 is one of the most famous cars in the world thanks to Oscar winning special effects genius (also known as 'the Real Q') John Stears who created the deadly DB5 for use by James Bond in Goldfinger with the car also being used in Thunderball. Although Ian Fleming had placed Bond in a DB Mark III in the novel, the DB5 was the company's newest model when the film was being made. The car used in the film was the original DB5 prototype, with another standard car used for stunts. Two more modified cars were built for publicity tours after the film's release. In January 2006, one of those cars was auctioned in Arizona for US $2,090,000. The same car was originally bought in 1970 for £5,000 from the owner, Sir Anthony Bamford, by a Tennessee museum owner. The other car is located in the Netherlands in the Louwman Museum, and this car was mainly used for promoting the movie.