As much as I love my best friend Alec, I hate his stubbornnnnnnnnnnness. He seems to think that he knows more than anyone about James Bond. Well, we got on the subject of Bond’s cars. He believes that all, ALL of Bond’s cars were BMWs. But I on the other hand said, “No, only in the last 3 movies had Bond’s cars been Beamers. All the others were Aston Martins.” Am I correct on this one, or is Alec?
You’re right…it’s Aston Martins - the Beamer thing just came up as promotion/product placement with the use of Pierce Brosnan (is that how you spell it?) as 007. I think they wanted to give Bond that “modern”, hip stylie…
In several of the movies Bond drove a Otus. You lose.
See Robert Benton’s “The James Bond Bedside Companion”
I don’t know if all the ones before the BMWs were Aston-Martins, but I am positive that there were other makes of cars used in the past besides BMWs.
BMW and Aston Martin and a Lotus Esprit. See http://www.mgmua.com/bond/vehicle_page.html
An Otus? Are you confused with Lotus? which was the name of the car in the movie: For Your Eyes Only? I now do recall that in the first two Bond movies, he drove a Bentley
Let’s see, the Official Bond cars–
In Dr. No Bond drove a Sunbeam Alpine.
In **Goldfinger **, **Thunderball ** and the beginning of Goldeneye it was an Aston Martin DB5.
In **The Spy Who Loved Me ** he drove a Lotus Esprit Turbo.
In **The Living Daylights ** it was a Aston Martin Volante V8.
In **Goldeneye ** he had a BMW Z3 Roadster.
In **Tomorrow Never Dies ** it was a BMW 750iL.
As for the “unofficial cars” the ones he picks up, there was a Ford Mustang, an AMC Hornet and others.
Damned keyboard didn’t register the “L” when I typed it. Of course, I meant Lotus.
Although Bond Does ride in a few elevators…
And let’s not forget the BMW bike he rode in Tomorrow Never Dies.
Personally I think he should ditch the German machinery and start driving a TVR. I could see him in a Chimaera, although there’s nothing wrong with the Griffith or Cerbera. The Tuscan, while striking to look at, is perhaps just a bit outré for Bond.
I’d like to see Bond in a Chrysler PT Cruiser.
Okay, I’m kidding.
All my life I’ve thought he drove Aston Martin DB7’s in the early films. Hey Ho.
I also think the wondefully functional BMW’s have to go. I’m sure the sponsorship is great but it’s just not cricket. Don’t think he’s a Jag kinda guy though, how about a Maclaren F1 ($1 million a throw, I’m sure HM, M or Q wouldn’t mind)
Or if we’re still going with BMWs, why not give him an M5? Sure, it’s not a $1 mil McLaren, but it’s still a good $100k.
Just before GoldenEye came out I heard that BMW didn’t have a functional Z3 ready, so they threw the body on the chassis of another car. I believe that it was somewhat inferior to the BMW…Pinto maybe?
Actually, in Ian Flemings’ book Goldfinger, Bond drove an Aston Martin DB3, from the Secret Service Pool.
In Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Bond drove a 4 1/2 litre
Bentley fitted with an Amherst Villiers supercharger.
On a side note, Ian Flemings’ books and the Character James Bond affected my world as young lad growing up so much so,
that I now where a Rolex stainless steel watch only because Bond did too. Had to beg my S.O. for quite a while until she relented and bought it for me. Had to wait through two presentless Christmases and two birthdays with just a card to ‘earn’ it. It was worth the wait.
Cheers
Damn, I hate missing a punchline.
Is it missbunnypenny ?
As long as we’re on the subject of Bond films, maybe some of you Bond mavens could enlighten me as to the story behind the “unofficial” Bond film “Never Say Never Again.” Was it produced without authorization from the rights-holder? How did it ever get released, then? But if it was authorized by the rights-holder, why is it excluded from the “canon” of Bond films?
That film is a remake of Thunderball, I believe. There was a conflict over who had the rights to Thunderball, and the co-producer of that flick won the rights to it. He was going to remake it several times, setting up his own franchise by remaking the same story (not that plots have a lot to do with Bond films) over and over again.
Anyways, he seems to have lost the rights to make any more versions of Thunderball.
And let’s not get into Casino Royale.
Let’s see if I can type THIS one without screwing up.
Never Say Never Again was made by Jack Wittingham and company because they WROTE “Thunderball”, IIRC. The original screen treatments for Thunderball were written by a group of four guys, ne of whom was Ian Fleming. This is the bunch that invented SPECTRE and Erns Stavro Blofeld, and a lot of the James Bond stuff. They were deliberately trying to produce a James Bond movie – and all of this BEFORE Dr. No came out. They started using a lot of the group mythology in he Bond Films (there’s no SPECTRE before this point in the Bond books). Then Ian Fleming went and wrote the book “Thunderball” using this group input without telling the other guys – or cutting the in on it. They were understandably pissed. They got screen credit for the movie Thunderball, and they worked on it, too (Wittingham and co. were, I think, underwater photographers, in addition to their other talents), but they also walked away with rights to use their stuff again.
Cut to the 1980s. They’ve been developing the property under a variety of names (Like “Warhead”). They finally get a script together and line up the stars, inclding Sean Connery, and they make “Never Say Never Again”. But they can’t use the Monty Normal theme, or the gun-barrel logo. They can use SPECTRE and Largo and even Blofeld, so they do (That’s why the Blofeld character never showed up again in the Eon films, by the way. He was supposed to be the villain in “The Spy Who Loved Me”, but Eon couldn’t get Wittingham et al. to agree. So they offed a bald, white-cat-petting bad guy at the beginning of “For Your Eyes Only” instead.)
For my money Never Say Never Again is one of the better Bond films by anyone, despite its flaws (why in HELL would you put a trapdoor underwater on a Parafoil boat? You could never use it without giving the show away.). Sean Connery gets to be part of the select group of stars to appear in a emake of his own film, and Sir Edmund Blackadder gets to appear i a Bond film.
Y’all forgot his personal car, the Bentley shown in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”.