The Bond spectacular you CAN already see
...starring the year’s hottest new car and one of Britain’s most indomitable young stunt drivers
THE rebooted Land Rover Defender is the most hotly anticipated new car of 2020. After a four-year absence, it finally hits British roads (and tracks) this spring. All models became available to order last week, and Land Rover reports that more than 1.2million people worldwide have already created their dream Defender on its online car configurator.
But before we see the new Defender on the road, we’ll get to see it in a spectacular new TV ad which airs later this month. It features behind-thescenes footage from postponed new Bond film No Time To Die, in which the Defender has a starring role.
As part of a chase scene, three black, Russian-registered Defenders perform a dramatic, synchronised 90ft off-road jump, with one later rolling on to its roof before driving away. The TV ad airs on March 20 but can already be seen on YouTube. It may help console Bond fans disappointed by the sevenmonth delay to the film’s release date, announced last week to avoid the likely peak of the coronavirus outbreak.
Like James Bond himself, the Land Rover Defender is a rugged, longlived British icon that has seen action in every corner of the globe. More than two million examples of the original
Land Rover – later christened the Defender – were built in Solihull between 1948 and 2016.
Loved by armies, aid agencies and adventurers, the Defender has also appeared in countless movies, from Born Free to Tomb Raider. Vintage examples are rocketing in value, with the very best selling for six figures, despite costing just £450 when they first went on sale. Daniel Craig’s Bond is seen driving an example from the early 1970s at his Jamaican home in No Time To Die.
The three-door ‘90’ version of the Defender went on sale last week with prices from £40,290, but the five-door ‘110’ version will arrive first with prices from £45,240. Ten 110s were supplied to Bond’s producers, equipped with the most powerful 296bhp engine and costing £78,800.
Bond’s famed stunt co-ordinators Chris Corbould and Lee Morrison didn’t need to modify the Defenders to cope with the jump, the roll and a high-speed off-road chase that feature in the footage. The cars were fitted with safety equipment such as roll cages, harnesses and fire extinguishers, but the engines and suspension were unaltered. All ten vehicles survived.
One of the three cars was piloted by fast-rising 25-year-old race and stunt driver Jessica Hawkins from Hampshire. This was her first 007 assignment. She didn’t get to meet Craig on his fifth and final outing as Bond, but she doesn’t regret that as much as not being at the wheel when the Defender rolls on to its roof. ‘That wasn’t me. But it looked a lot of fun. I’d have loved to have found out what that felt like,’ she says.
But she did get to drive the middle Defender in the three-car jump scene, filmed on Salisbury
Plain. ‘It was a REALLY big jump,’ says Jess, who currently races Formula 3 single-seaters in the womenonly W Series. ‘It’s a myth that stunt drivers have no fear. But I’ve done racing, drifting and live-action stunt work. And so long as I had faith in my vehicle and the team around me, I felt like I’d try anything.
‘But the reality of what we were doing only hit me once I was airborne. I was so high I couldn’t see the ground, only sky. I thought that the landing was really going to hurt, but it was fine. That’s a testament to the Defender.’
And to make her job even harder, Jess also had to avoid not only the Defenders on either side, but also the stunt riders on Britishmade Triumph motorcycles riding between them.
‘We were really pushing at the boundaries of what is possible,’ she says. ‘But it’s a Bond movie, right? So obviously it has to be spectacular. And I think the end result is as spectacular as anything you’ve seen in an ad or a Bond film before. And maybe more so.’
Bond’s half-century relationship with Aston Martin continues, of course. When it’s released in the UK on November 12, No Time to Die will feature four models from the elite British sports-car maker, although Craig is seen driving only two vintage Astons.
Bond’s iconic 1960s DB5 ‘with all the usual refinements’ has been given a modern update and takes part in a street battle with the bad guys in the Italian town of Matera.
Back in London, Bond is seen pulling the covers from a 1980s V8 Vantage – identical to the one driven by Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights – as he takes it out of storage and drives it to MI6 HQ.
It’s a stellar cast of British cars, which threatens to eclipse even Daniel Craig for screen appeal.