Ritchie Marine Boat Compass Tr-31w on 2040-parts.com

'James Bond' Aston Martin to be auctioned

THE ASTON Martin most closely associated with James Bond is to go to auction next month. The DB5, an example of which featured in 1964’s movie Goldfinger, where it was driven by Sean Connery’s Bond, is perhaps the most recognisable ‘Bond car’. The car featured again more recently, this time with Daniel Craig’s Bond behind the wheel in the blockbuster Skyfall.

One Lap of the Web: The lost F-Type, a velvet Panamera and Lutz on being king

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we're not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there's more out there than we'd ever be able to cover, here's our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. -- Long before there was a Jaguar F-Type, there was the XJ41, originally conceived to be a lightweight successor to the XKE.

BMW 640d xDrive announced

On Thursday, Greg Kable waxed effusively about the new BMW M550d xDrive coupe, suggesting that it was the ultimate 5-series for everyday use. On Friday, Munich announced that the 5's two-door sibling will receive an AWD diesel variant: the 640d xDrive. While not quite as high-zoot as the 5-series' top oil burner, the 640d's 3.0-liter, twin-turbo straight-six cranks out a respectable 465 lb-ft of almighty torque between 1,500 rpm and 2,500 rpm, plus 313 hp at 4,400 rpm—numbers that, according to BMW, will carry the 6-series to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds.