You can pick up some second hand car spares fairly easily on the open market, such as brake discs, bumpers and engines. However, some parts are considerably rarer and some parts don’t exist at all. One such part is the legendary ejector seat in James Bond’s iconic DB5. For many people this is the ultimate gadget used by the MI5 agent, and at one time you could even buy a range of toy cars that used a mechanism that ejected a plastic figure.
The Aston Martin DB5 is considered by many critics to be the ultimate James Bond car. In the original Goldfinger novel by crime writer supreme Ian Fleming, Bond is placed in an earlier model, the DB III. This wasn’t suitable for the effects needed in the movie so after much indecision the studio decided on the DB5 as it could fit the necessary mechanisms to appear as if it had an ejector seat. Quite how many car parts they went through making this work is anyone’s guess.
The ejector seat is actually used in one epic scene. Bond is in the car with the villain pointing a gun at his head. He reaches down into the dashboard and pushes the necessary button to flip a special canopy in the roof of the car and propel his assailant out of the vehicle.
British car jokers Top Gear took a look at the technology behind the ejector seat and attempted to rig up a similar system in an old Range Rover. This at least proves that all kinds of cars can be fitted with old spare ejector seats. However, in their classic hapless fashion Richard Hammond and James May forgot to fit the necessary roof mechanism and their test was proved worthless as the test dummy was smashed into pieces.
Another TV show in the US, Myth-Busters, also took a look at whether or not it was actually possible to create a working ejector seat. They used a beat up Jaguar, cut a hole in the roof and mounted a bunch of incendiary rockets under one of the seats. This was very effective at propelling their crash test dummy out of the car, but unfortunately the heat generated by the rockets was so hot that the interior of the car was torched. We’ve heard about another TV show that apparently used a liquid nitrogen system to power the ejector seat, but unfortunately we can’t find any more information on it.
So how much would you have to pay for a second hand ejector seat for your DB5? Well, we’ve looked around for a standard seat for the DB5 and it doesn’t seem like such a thing is available, unfortunately, so the manufacturer must expect you to mount your own in the event of any wear and tear.
However we have had a good look round the internet, and we’ve been able to find the average cost of an aeroplane ejection seat, which starts off at the very reasonable price of around £60,000. We’d estimate that it would probably cost even more than this to fit James Bond’s ejection seat to your car, as you’d be looking at a number of different parts just to make the system work, including the button on the dash board and the roof canopy.
Of course, if you’re just looking for a cost effective car seat without the ejection facility or any other second hand car part, just remember that you can now find quality spares on the internet. Even if you can’t find a place that has you part available immediately there are now a number of breaker agency sites where if you’re looking for a part, you can put in a request.
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