There must be an arch villain, accompanied by evil henchmen as he pursues his nefarious scheme.
There must be beautiful women for Commander Bond to captivate. An arsenal of high-tech gadgetry. Shaken but unstirred vodka martinis.
And fast cars. Whether played by Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan or any of the other Bond actors, Secret Agent 007 always drives fast cars.
Longtime moviegoers may still associate the suave super sleuth with the ejection seat-equipped Aston Martin DB5 he steered in Goldfinger (1964). In his most-recent outing, Die Another Day, Bond is back in an Aston Martin, this time a limited-edition Vanquish model.
But there have been many other cars -- and much stranger vehicles -- in which Bond has maintained his unflappable demeanour amid the wildest of chases.
In 1971's Diamonds are Forever, Bond, played by Sean Connery, calmly flipped a '71 Ford Mustang Mach 1 up onto two wheels to squeeze it through a narrow Las Vegas alley. In the same movie, he made an unexpected escape in a stolen moonbuggy.
In 1973's Live And Let Die, Roger Moore made his first appearance as Agent 007 and jumped a Glastron speedboat over a Louisiana sheriff's patrol car. For an encore, he used a low bridge to convert a double-decker London bus into a single-decker during a lively chase sequence.
Perhaps inspired by his previous automotive antics, Bond used an unlikely vehicle, an AMC Hornet, to perform an incredible 360-degree, barrel-roll jump across a Bangkok canal in The Man With The Golden Gun (1974).
In The Spy Who Loved Me, 007 adopted a sleek Lotus that transformed itself into a submarine at the touch of a button, a vehicle almost as famous as his Goldfinger Aston Martin. In the same 1977 movie, Bond rode a Wetbike, the conceptual forerunner of today's personal watercraft.
In the category of Most Unlikely Chase Vehicle, the winner must be the Citroën 2 CV model used by 007 and Melina Havelock to careen down a mountainside in 1981's For Your Eyes Only. Equally amusing was the Renault taxi commandeered by Bond in A View To A Kill, which somehow managed to continue driving after it was cut in half. This 1985 installment was Roger Moore's seventh appearance as the secret agent.
The adaptable Bond (Timothy Dalton this time) had no trouble piloting a Kenworth gasoline tanker in License To Kill (1989). In 1995 Pierce Brosnan assumed the Bond role, driving a Russian tank in GoldenEye and jumping a motorcycle between buildings two years later in Tomorrow Never Dies.
All in a day's work, really.
From the beginning, automobiles in Bond's movies have had an iconic status. According to Robert Thompson, a popular culture expert and professor of media and culture at New York's Syracuse University, this helped make them an early success.
"One of the reasons James Bond movies work so well for an American audience, in spite of their international settings, is that James Bond has a North American's relationship to his automobiles," says Prof. Thompson. "They are an extension of his powerful and suave personality and often the means by which he achieves his freedom."
The significance of the Bond-car phenomenon has not been lost on the commercial world.
In 1965, Corgi released its scale model of Bond's gadget-laden DB5 from Goldfinger. Nearly four million copies were sold by 1968 and the DB5 remains Corgi's best-known model. Subsequent Bond vehicles are an important part of Corgi's current line.
The payoff has been even larger for automakers. For decades, they've capitalized on the advertising value of placing their vehicles in television shows and movies. Clearly, a vehicle's use by a character in a TV show has a better promotional payoff than that achieved by simply sponsoring the show.
It was no accident that Miss Jane Hathaway drove a Dodge convertible in The Beverly Hillbillies. Chrysler Corp. supplied all the unmodified cars used in the series. In the same manner, detective Jim sported a new Pontiac Firebird in each season of The Rockford Files.
How many Corvettes were sold because of the car's prominent use in the 1960s TV series Route 66? How many buyers flocked to Alfa Romeo showrooms after watching angst-ridden Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) drive a red Duetto Spider in The Graduate?
In the 1960s, Jaguar probably wondered how many Volvo P1800 sales were stimulated when The Saint hit TV screens. Perhaps ill-advisedly, the leaping-cat company declined a request from the series' producers for an XKE model for lead character Simon Templar.
In Die Another Day, Ford Motor Company has achieved a product-placement hat trick. The movie's three star cars are all Ford products (Ford owns Aston Martin and Jaguar). Bond's Aston Martin Vanquish model is fitted with the latest weaponry including machine-guns and missile launchers. One of 500 hand-assembled but unarmed copies of this car can be yours, should you have the $229,000 price of admission.
Bond's nemesis in Die Another Day, the evil Zao, flits about in another prestigious British conveyance, a Jaguar XKR painted in the same green colour used on Jaguar Racing's current Formula One race car. Ford suggests potential customers will picture themselves as international spies as soon as they jump into the driver's seat. Should you be planning to emulate Zao's dastardly deeds, a 2002 Jaguar XKR, minus the firepower, will drain your bank account to the tune of $82,000 (coupe) or $87,000 (convertible).
If you think the Aston Martin and Jaguar star cars seem unusually competent in the winter-driving scenes in Die Another Day, you're right. To help keep them on the straight and narrow, both vehicles were converted to accept the four-wheel-drive system from the Ford Explorer.
In Die Another Day, the obligatory Bond babe is Jinx, a.k.a. actress Halle Berry. Her vehicle of choice is a coral pink Thunderbird convertible. The movie car has inspired Ford to offer 700 special 2003 Limited Edition 007 Ford Thunderbirds. Each will feature coral paint, 21-spoke chrome wheels, white seats and subtle 007 badges.
Not to be outdone, Revlon has announced the release of its all-new Limited Edition 007 Colour Collection, a product line fronted by Halle Berry that will be on cosmetic counters in time for Christmas gift giving.
Honourable mention for product placement in Die Another Day must go to Canada's Bombardier Inc. Its MX Z-REV snowmobile is featured prominently in wintery Icelandic action scenes. Not surprisingly, Bombardier is making a specially trimmed "007 Special Edition" variant of this sled available on a one-per-dealer basis.
Bond Car Quiz
1. What color was the Sunbeam Alpine roadster driven by James Bond in Dr. No?
2. In The Spy Who Loved Me, did Agent 007's submarine start life as a Lotus Elite, Lotus Esprit or Lotus Eclat model?
3. In which movie did the super sleuth drive a BMW Z3 roadster?
4. Bond babe Tracey Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) operated a Ford Motor Company model in On Her Majesty's Secret Service? Name its make and model.
5. In Thunderball, what type of weaponry was mounted on Fiona Volpe's BSA Lightning motorcycle?
6. In The Man With the Golden Gun, the villain Scaramanga escaped by converting this car into an airplane.
7. Name the make and model of the motorcycle that James Bond jumped between buildings in Tomorrow Never Dies.
8. What vehicle did Agent 007 drive by remote control in The World is not Enough?
9. In Goldfinger, how did the villain Auric Goldfinger smuggle gold?
10. What exoticar did Xenia Onatopp drive in the race scene near the beginning of GoldenEye?
Answers
1. Blue, 2. Lotus Esprit, 3. GoldenEye, 4. Mercury Cougar, 5. Rocket launchers, 6. AMC Matador, 7. BMW R1200, 8. BMW Z8, 9. By casting it into parts for his Rolls-Royce, 10. Ferrari 355
Copyright © 2003 Murray Jackson All rights reserved.
Back to Articles