The Bond Cars

Could you list all the different cars that James Bond has driven over the last 50 years? Since 1962 we have been treated to twenty-three movies (official Bond movies, that is), that makes it almost an average of one every two years, but then we all know that James Bond is a busy fellow looking after the interests of Great Britain, while he isn’t sipping Martinis, that is.

It’s amazing that spies and villains in the Bond movies, of the female variety, always seem to be the most gorgeous, leggy numbers around, it almost makes you want to join MI6 so that you too can bump into a few of them. And of course, Moneypenny is a bit dishy too, so it can’t be a bad life being a spy. Then of course you also have access to all the latest gadgetry, courtesy of Q, who also happens to be in charge of the MI6 fleet of cars which naturally include the latest, fastest supercars on the planet and are usually packed with all manner of extra goodies like mortar launch tubes, rockets, skis, parachutes, containers that deposit oil on the road, bullet-proof shields, machine guns…Bond is truly one dangerous dude.

The luckiest spy on the planet always seems to get the keys to Q’s latest set of wheels, which over the years has included a vast array of cars, but the best known of them all is undoubtedly the Aston Martin, and most notably the DB5, which appeared for the first time in the third Bond movie, Goldfinger. What the Bond name hasn’t done for the Aston Martin brand isn’t worth knowing, but then the famous British car has got Bond out of numerous scrapes with villains of all manner and description.

On her Majesty’s Business Bond gets to drive all sorts of memorable cars like the 1961 Sunbeam Alpine that was used in the first Bond movie, Dr. No, the submersible Lotus Esprit S1 in The Spy Who Loved Me, and of course the (almost) indestructible BMW 750iL in Tomorrow Never Dies. Other cars have been ‘borrowed’ from unsuspecting bystanders along the way such as the Alfa Romeo GTV6 in Octopussy, and the BMW R1200 motorcycle in Tomorrow Never Dies, as well as many others.

Bond’s transport has included Alfa Romeos, an AMC Hornet, Jeep Cherokee and Wagoneer, Audi 200 Avant, A6 and A5, various Bentleys, various BMWs, MG, Jaguar, Range Rover, Ford Thunderbird and Mustang, Chevrolet, Mercedes, Lotus, Rolls-Royce, Saab, Citroën, Maserati, and so the list goes on.

In the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, Honda contributed twenty five CRF250R motorcycles for various stunts, twenty of the bikes being modified for the filming of various special scenes which took place in Istanbul and Adana, Turkey, earlier this year. Two motorcycles in particular were modified to look quite different from the others, these being the ‘Police’ and ‘Street Merchant’ bikes, but they were in fact all the same machines.

Lets hope that James Bond continues to criss-cross the globe in his efforts to keep the borders of Great Britain safe and secure for the next fifty years, just as he has done over the last five decades.