Technology · Gadgets

James Bond’s Driven Some Icons, and Bond 26’s Car Is Still Open

A motoring review of all 25 Bond films picks the DB5 as 007’s signature car and weighs what he might drive in Bond 26. An Aston Martin looks likely, though a revived Lotus Esprit name could challenge it.

By matthew jonathan

November 15, 20263 min read

James Bond’s driven some of cinema’s best-known cars, and a motoring review published on November 14, 2026 argues the 26th film’s hero car is likely to be an Aston Martin. Nothing is confirmed.

Debate over who plays 007 next is loud. Callum Turner, Jack Lowden and Josh O’Connor are the names raised in that conversation. The review sidesteps the casting talk and asks a different question: what will he drive?

Why the car matters

The review treats the choice of a Bond car as almost as important as the choice of actor. The cars work like characters, it says, to the point that an on-screen death hurts. Its example is the physics-defying end of the Aston Martin DBS in Casino Royale.

What Bond 26 might drive

The review says nobody knows for sure that Bond 26 will use an Aston Martin, but it seems likely. Aston Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark said earlier this year that the franchise matters for attracting people to the brand. He added that he felt “wildly jealous” of Aston Martin’s Bond work when he was CEO of Bentley.

Hallmark’s envy has a root: in Ian Fleming’s original novels, 007 drove a Bentley.

Aston Martin’s Bond link also runs beyond cinema. The Valhalla supercar appears in virtual form in the video game 007: First Light. The review thinks a Valhalla would be too conspicuous for a spy, so the current Vanquish might make more sense. It also does not rule out a DB5 turning up.

A rival could emerge. The review calls it highly likely that the new Lotus Type 135 will be called the Esprit. That would revive a name almost as closely tied to Bond as the DB5, however much it might upset Aston Martin’s marketing department.

The DB5 as the benchmark

The review names the Aston Martin DB5 as the car most closely associated with Bond. It was his first company car, and its gadgets came from MI6’s Q, played by Desmond Llewelyn.

In Goldfinger (1964), Sean Connery’s 007 uses tyre-slashing wheel hubs against Tilly Masterson’s Ford Mustang. He then tracks Auric Goldfinger’s Rolls-Royce to a secret factory in Austria.

Leaving that factory, the DB5 shows its full kit. Bulletproof glass and a rear shield stop gunfire, and oil and smoke dispensers try to shake off pursuers. Machine guns sit behind the indicators, and a button on the gearlever fires the ejector seat.

The car proved so popular that it returned in Thunderball. Aston Martin sales were boosted by the publicity, according to the review.

It has since reappeared often. In 1995’s GoldenEye it raced a Ferrari F355. In the Daniel Craig era it appeared briefly in Casino Royale, then took bigger roles in Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die.

The review ranks the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) as the one car that can rival the DB5 for the title of Bond’s car. It wants to see 007 in a Lotus once more.