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| Super agent 007 drives Bentleys and Aston
Martins in the James Bond spy thrillers. Shown above with
"JB007" tags is one of four Aston Martins built for
1964's "Goldfinger" and 1965's "Thunderball." Yet, author Ian
Fleming chose to drive early 60s Thunderbirds and traded one
of these for his 1963 Studebaker Avanti which he regarded as
"an infinitely higher class of machine." Fleming visited
the Studebaker South Bend, Indiana factory to order his car
in black. The world famous author purchased the Avanti in 1963.
The black color required some extra coats of paint and was never
very successfully applied to the fiberglass body. Much effort
has been exerted to discover the fate of this car, all inconclusive
so far. Fleming died in 1964 so the chances of the car being
"parted out" are high, in which case, an Avanti with
a rare pedigree is gone forever. Or is it still parked in the
garage of an English castle with the Bentleys and Aston
Martins? |
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Ian Fleming's black 1963 Studebaker Avanti.
Fleming in his Avanti and British plates
"8EYR." |
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Ian Fleming
was born into a wealthy and influential English family. He attended
British schools such as Eton and Sandhurst and began writing
while at school in Kitzbuhel, Austria, where he failed the entrance
requirements for the Foreign Service. He then joined the news
agency Reuters as a journalist. He worked in the financial sector
for the family bank, but just prior to the Second World War
was recruited into British Naval Intelligence. When the war
ended, he retired to Jamaica where he built an estate that he
named "Goldeneye", took up writing full-time, and created the
character that would make him famous – British Secret Service
agent James Bond, who first appeared in his novel "Casino Royale." |
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