From James Bond’s Missing Aston Martin to Submarine Lotuses: The Strange Journeys of Iconic Movie Cars

Some cars in films are so iconic they overshadow the actors and become the stars themselves. But after the cameras stop rolling and everyone moves on, where do these amazing cars end up? While many are on hire from companies that specialise in classic and unusual vehicles, some of them actually end up in the bizarrest of places. Read on for our round-up of some of movie’s most incredible cars, and the strange places they came to be in….

1. “Goldfinger” (1964) and “Thunderball” (1965) – Aston Martin DB5

James Bond is nothing without his Aston Martin, complete with spy gadgets galore. It was, and still is, the perfect British car for this special agent. And it was no stranger to being the vehicle of choice for debonair British spies – it had previously be used in an episode of The Saint and in the 1981, it was driven by Roger Moore in Cannonball Run. 

What makes this remarkable is that nobody has seen the car in twenty-seven years. It had been bought in 1986 by collector Anthony Pugliese III at Sotheby’s auction in New York for $250,000. He enjoyed showing the car at car shows and Bond events. In 1997 was stolen out of his private jet hangar at Boca Raton airport and has never been found since. 

Of course, this wasn’t the only DB5 used in the films. It is one of four used. But it is considered the “original”, and still includes some of the gadgets as seen in the film, such as ejector seats, machine guns and tire shredders. These were originally removed from the car post-filming and then re-fitted several years later.

As of now, the car is estimated to be worth $25 million dollars – and one can only imagine its value has increased partly in thanks to its current missing status.

So, where on earth is it? Art recovery specialists believed they may have tracked its location to a private collection somewhere in the Middle East, where the VIN number on a DB5 was purportedly seen matching this missing car. However, this was reported in 2021 and the car has still not turned up. It seems hard to imagine that the current owner doesn’t know its provenance – but for now, they’ve gotten away with it.

Goldfinger (1964), a classic James Bond film Japanese Poster. Shop Here

2. “Bullitt” (1968) – Ford Mustang DMC-12

While the Bond movies are spy films with fancy cars in them, Bullitt is proper car movie. While minimal exposition or dialogue, this movie is mostly comprised of long, nail-biting car chase scenes through the streets of San Francisco with a surly Steve McQueen behind the wheel of this dark green Ford Mustang. 

Recently selling at auction in 2020 for an eye-watering $3.7 million dollars, this car made history in the sale of “celebrity” vehicles. But the price tag is not so surprising – few actors have an image that is nearly inseparable from the vehicles they’ve driven. And it wasn’t just for the movies, McQueen loved the real thing. He was an obsessive lover of racing, cars and motorcycles.

What is remarkable is that the 2020 auction is the first time the car had been seen in public for decades. After the movie wrapped it was bought by a Warner Bros. employee, who then sold it on a couple of years later for $6,000. Rather than a museum piece, the vehicle essentially became the family car – used for school runs and shopping trips. McQueen himself tracked down the owner and asked to buy it from them, and replace it with another car as well. The owner refused. The family needed it and they loved driving it too.

Around 1980, the clutch failed and it was garaged. But the family never sold it, even as they moved states several times. By 2014, the owner’s son, Sean, got it out again after his father’s death. He restored it and had it fully authenticated by an expert. Luckily for him, the family had kept all the original paperwork. After enjoying touring the car around for a couple of years, he decided it was time to part with it.

Like most cars in movies, it wasn’t the only one used in filming. As Bullitt was a film with some complicated stunts, they also used another Mustang as the “stunt double”, that was to be scrapped after the film was wrapped. While the original vehicle ended up at a Kentucky horse farm, this car ended up somewhere even more bizarre – a Mexico junkyard.

Badly damaged after filming, there was no question that this car would end up in the scrapyard. But that it would sit there for forty years is certainly surprising. In 2017, Hugo Sanchez took his recent purchase, a tired old Mustang, to a local custom shop with the hopes of having it refurbed to look like another iconic movie car – the “Eleanor” Mustang from Gone in Sixty Seconds. The shop owner had an inkling that he was looking at something special. Lo and behold, a search of the car’s build number was consecutive to the original Mustang from Bullitt. A closer inspection revealed the custom work done to the car to make it a stunt vehicle. Under the cream-coloured paint job was the car’s dark green base coat.

So, how did it end up in Mexico? After being dumped at scrapyard near the movie studio, someone shipped it to Mexico, where it eventually again ended up in a tiny junkyard on the Baja peninsula, where it sat for four decades until Hugo Sanchez purchased it along with another car for $5,000.

Steve McQueen Bullitt 1968 – Movie Poster Print. Shop Here

3. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) – Lotus Esprit Submarine car

This technically wasn’t even a car – it was a custom building submersible design to look like a Lotus Esprit. Which kind of answers the question of why this particular “vehicle” would drop off the map after filming. After a brief afterlife at a touring movie prop, this bizarre movie relic ended up in a Long Island shipping container for ten years. When the lease on the container ran out, the container was sold to an unwitting buyer for $100. They must have been quite pleased, as they refurbed and exhibited it for the next few years.

In 2013, it was bought by Elon Musk for £500,000 at auction. Bearing in mind, this “car” is a prop and has no engine. But it is still a cool piece of movie history.

4. “Christine” (1983) – 1958 Plymouth Fury

As a movie whose main character is the eponymous (evil) car, it is no surprise that they used a lot of them in the filming – 24 in total. The twenty-five year old cars were sourced from all over the country, before being restored to fit different stages of filming – some needed to look old, some new.

 All of them were scrapped after filming, bar three. One ended up in the U.K., exact whereabouts unknown. The second was raffled off, only to be sold by the winner to car collector Ron Pratte. In 2015, it was sold to the Rochester Auto Museum. Most recently it failed to sell for its guide price in 2020 at Mecum Auction in Kissimmee, Florida.

The last had a more unusual fate and technically isn’t even a fully “real” car. Eddie Sandlin Jr. dad had worked with the film’s director, John Carpenter. He had no complete vehicle, but rather hunted down spare parts individually to build his own “Frankenstein” car that would be identical to “Christine”. He had been desperate to buy one of the movie car after the film wrapped, but was told the ones that weren’t for the junkyard were already spoken for. After placing multiple ads in local classified, he finally got lucky with a 1958 Plymouth Belvedere sitting on a B-movie lot. From this, he was able to find out where the “Christine” Plymouths had been scrapped. He combed the junkyard, which reportedly had the remains of 5 “Christines” and other assorted parts and purchased as many of the real parts as he could find, eventually building a near-perfect “Christine”.

After being sold several times, it was bought by collector Bill Gibson when he was nineteen years old. He enjoys showing it at conventions and car shows, even renting it out for weddings and movies. Evidently a huge fan of the movie, and more than a little in love with the car, Gibson enjoys playing on the car’s supernatural history, describing the car as “pretty much alive”.

5. “Blues Brothers” – 1974 Dodge Monaco Police Interceptor

A film known pretty much for its ridiculous car chases, a list of iconic cars wouldn’t be complete without the magic “Bluesmobile”. Unlike the other cars on this list, there is so many of them its hard to tell what is a “real” movie car and what is a fan-made replica.

Real “cop cars”, 13 Monaco Intercepters were bought from the California Highway Patrol – out of 60 cars used in total in the film. They needed numerous different tune-ups for the myriad stunts that a 24-hour body shop was on standby during filming. At the time of its release, they set the record for the most cars destroyed in one film.

Since so many cars were used in the filming of Blues Brothers, it’s no surprise a good few are still around today. The “original” is in the Volo car museum. However, as the film was such a hit, there are a lot of replicas out there. A quick internet search reveals numerous blog posts of excited people who think they have stumbled across “real” Bluesmobiles in the strangest of locations, and experts in the comments are quick to analyse the photos and detect when its a clever copy. 

The Blues Brothers Concert (Universal, 1980). Prop Movie Poster Print. Shop Here.

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