Licence To Drive: The Cars Of James Bond

The personification of suave and sophisticated, James Bond is perhaps as well known for his love of cars as he is for his love of women. In fact, many of his cars live on in the memory of fans long after those of the Bond girls have faded away.

The cars most associated with James Bond have never been your average family run around; after all it would be hard to imagine the super-spy driving a Ford Escort equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers! However, while James Bond did make use of more mundane vehicles when the need arose throughout his adventures, he is perhaps better known though for his use of those gadget-laden cars which featured heavily in the movies.

Nevertheless, the first of the James Bond cars was an altogether more modest vehicle — a mustard coloured Sunbeam Alpine, which featured in the first James Bond film, ‘Dr. No’ and sadly was not equipped with machine guns or oil sprays. It was also a far cry from Bond’s preferred choice of vehicle, the British-made Bentley.

The cars in ‘From Russia With Love’ were slightly more upmarket, although Bond drove neither. Instead he was chauffeured around in a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith and a Ford Fairlane station wagon. Again, there were no gadgets; in ‘Goldfinger’, however, they appeared with a vengeance and ignited the imagination of car enthusiasts everywhere. In ‘Goldfinger’, Bond drove a quintessential British car — the Aston Martin DB5, which featured machine guns, revolving number plates, rocket launchers and even an ejector seat! The same style of car also appeared briefly in ‘Thunderball’.

For the next film, ‘You Only Live Twice’, Bond went Japanese with his choice of car with a Toyota 2000GT. At the time, the 2000GT was an extremely rare and expensive car, even in Japan. Bond’s version had none of the gadgets seen in ‘Goldfinger’ save for a TV monitor built into the dashboard. Bond’s other method of transport in the film — a gyrocopter named ‘Little Nellie’ — more than made up for the lack of gadgets, however, with machine guns, rocket launchers, flamethrower and even air-mines attached to parachutes!

A new Bond signalled a new car, and George Lazenby’s portrayal of James Bond featured a return to British-made vehicles and a new Aston Martin; this time the DBS car, although glimpses of the car were confined mainly to the early sequences of the film, with Bond often being seen in cars of other characters, rather than his own.

One of the greatest car chases in modern cinema history also features one of Bond’s best known cars — the Mustang Mach 1. Mustangs appeared frequently in the Bond movies, and in the chase sequence in which Bond is pursued through the streets of Las Vegas by the police, also features one of the most well-known movie gaffes; when Bond’s car enters an alley on one pair of wheels to elude the police, the car emerges on the opposite side on the opposite set of wheels! Impressive, even by James Bond’s standards!

Perhaps the favourite of schoolboys everywhere, the image of the white Lotus Esprit emerging from the sea onto a crowded beach in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ is many people’s idea of the definitive Bond car. Equipped with gadgets aplenty, the Lotus Esprit wasn’t just a car but a submarine. A similar version appeared in ‘For Your Eyes Only’ but this time around the supercar had to play second fiddle to a souped-up Citroen 2CV!

The Aston Martin returned yet again, with the Aston Martin V8 taking centre stage in ‘The Living Daylights’ and featuring rocket launchers, spiked tyres and laser tyre-shredders among other gadgets, which even included a pair of skis! However, with another James Bond on the horizon, another change of car was inevitable and this time BMW provided the wheels: the BMW Z3 appeared in ‘Goldeneye’, even though it hadn’t yet been released, while the Z8 model appeared in ‘The World Is Not Enough’.

‘Die Another Day’ saw another return to Aston Martin with the V12 Vanquish being the car of choice and was once again replete with gadgets while Bond drove the DBS V12 version in ‘Casino Royale’ and will do so again in the upcoming ‘Quantum Of Solace’ movie.

But how do Bond’s employers, MI6, manage to keep up with the replacement costs of vehicles for James Bond, given his knack of wrecking them!? After all, they’re unlikely to require BMW car finance or a bank loan to finance their latest Aston Martin purchase, while most insurance companies would be unlikely to quote for a vehicle equipped with machine guns and which runs a very high risk of being destroyed!

It’s perhaps just as well for the super-spy then that his licence to drive hasn’t yet been revoked, while if he had to foot the bill for replacing the vehicles himself, he might be more careful!? Otherwise he could be forced into driving that Ford Escort!

Daniel Collins writes on a number of topics on behalf of a digital marketing agency and a variety of clients. As such, this article is to be considered a professional piece with business interests in mind.