Saab auctions 007 James Bond car
Staff from Bonhams auctioneers in London dressed as characters from a James Bond film pose with a white 1976 Lotus Esprit car from the 1977 film ‘ The Spy Who Loved Me ‘ in London, England on November 13, 2008. The Saab 900 Turbo is set be auctioned off on Jan. 20.
MALMO, Sweden — Saab, the bankrupt Swedish car company, is auctioning off the Saab 007, which it fitted out to exactly match the 900 Turbo described in License Renewed, the 1981 James Bond novel by John Gardner.
The car boasts bullet-proof glass, self-sealing tires designed to withstand bullets, an oxygen tank, a side gun-port, and rear-mounted tear gas canisters designed to dispel pursuers.
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The black-leather interior includes hidden compartments for grenades, a Magnum handgun and a Browning revolver. Its turbo engine has been developed so that it can go from 0 to 60 in less than seven seconds.
The “Silver Beast”, as James Bond refers to it, first appeared in License Renewed, the 1981 Bond by John Gardner, and then went on to feature in two more Bond novels, though not in GoldenEye, the only Gardner novel to be turned into a Bond film.
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Saab's bankruptcy administrators have decided to auction off the 120 Saab cars from the Saab museum one by one, after deciding it would not earn as much value from selling the museum as a whole.
The sale of the Bond car comes at the same time as an exhibition in Britain of the cars which featured in the 23 James Bond films, including the most famous of them all, the Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger in 1964.
Anyone who wishes to travel in secret-agent style had better get a move on, as the bidding ends on Friday January 20th.