Toyota/Mahindra to Buy Aston Martin ????????????

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The majority shareholder in Aston Martin has reportedly already been talking to potential buyers, including Toyota and Indian giant Mahindra. Bond fans might consider the move is perfectly timed, with unmatcheable free marketing around the appearance of a vintage Aston Martin DB5 in the latest 007 movie, Skyfall, the eleventh in which the British luxury car brand has featured.



Skyfall hits Australian cinemas on November 22, but is already raking in ticket box takings overseas that could see it the biggest-grossing film in the series. The publicity could help the sale by Kuwaiti company Investment Dar, which holds 64 per cent of Aston Martin and has appointed Rothschild bankers to consult on the sale, according to a report by business website Bloomberg.

Saying five people with knowledge of the sale had spoken to Bloomberg, the article cited two of them as explaining the sellers have hit a hurdle over price, with potential investors unwilling to shell out the 503 million pounds ($769 million) reported asking price.

That’s the amount Investment Dar paid for its share in Aston Martin five years ago, and is now said to be sought to help the Kuwaiti company clear sizeable debt. Aston Martin last year made a before-tax profit of just 76 million pounds ($117 million).

However Bloomberg says Investment Dar has denied it has put its share of the carmaker on the market, and that representatives of Mahindra and Toyota have declined to comment on the matter.

Skyfall sees the return of the quintessential Bond car, the Aston Martin DB5 voted the greatest 007 car in several online and magazine polls over the years. A silver-birch DB5 made its debut in Goldfinger in 1964 with an array of gadgets such as pop-out machine guns, bullet shield, tyre-shredding Boadicea-style wheels, an ejector seat, a car phone and revolving number plates which would be considered illegal in these days of speed cameras.

One of the two DB5s built specially for Goldfinger sold at auction for $4.1 million in 2010. The other was rebuilt as a regular road car and sold on, only to be stolen from its last owner in Florida.

While most people associate the British master spy with Astons, the original Ian Fleming books had him driving a Bentley. In a new book commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications, author Jeffery Deaver has returned 007 to a Bentley in the pages of Carte Blanche.

Despite Bond driving a Bentley in Fleming's books, his first car in a movie was a Sunbeam Alpine in the 1962 film Dr No. He didn't drive a Bentley until the second Bond flick, From Russia With Love, in 1963 in which the licensed-to-kill agent drove a Bentley Mark IV. He also drove Bentleys in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) and Moonraker (1979). It wasn't until the third Bond movie, Goldfinger in 1964, that Bond drove the famous DB5.
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