DOUBLE TAP
IT’S THE CAR SYNONYMOUS WITH 007, AND AS THE LATEST BOND FLICK AWAITS ITS CINEMA RELEASE, WE CAN HAPPILY CONFIRM THAT ASTON MARTINS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS MOVIE…
IN A CRAMPED, unglamorous attic space, Daniel Craig is sitting on the floor, casual as you like. You can’t help but notice that he’s handsome but – no offence – not quite as smouldering as his big-screen persona; his face is covered in what resembles a grim, female-repelling case of teenage acne. To his credit though, he cracks a joke about it.
He’s down-to-earth, relaxed, and not the Daniel Craig we expected; not the guy who, a few years back, threw a high-profile celebrity strop, swearing blind he’d rather slit his wrists than make another Bond movie.
There’s a good reason for his hang-loose demeanour. This isn’t the Daniel Craig, simply a version of him, the next best thing.
Mark Higgins is a 48-year-old British rally champion turned full-time stunt driver, a job that now includes drifting, doughnuting and body-doubling on behalf of the world’s most famous fictional spy. And that hideous skin affliction? The spots are known in the trade as ‘motion capture’, a digital-dot system placed onto a stunt driver’s face during filming, allowing the actor’s mug to be grafted on later by the CGI team.
“We did use face masks in previous Bonds but they’re hard to get rid of digitally,” says Higgins.
It’s a blisteringly hot morning in the ancient, sandstone-washed city of Matera, southern Italy, back in September 2019. We’re on the set of the forthcoming Bond movie, No Time to Die, having been given super-rare, one-day-only permission to watch how 007 car stunts are stitched together.
Today’s scene, from which Higgins has taken a few minutes away to talk to Wheels, is being shot in a picture-postcard Italian piazza, albeit at a pace that would make some glaciers feel sprightly. It’s a segment that may or may not form part of the franchise’s now-signature, high-octane opening sequence (the production overlords are vague about plot details).
Bond and his iconic 1960s silver birch Aston Martin DB5 have just been chased through the skinny, decidedly car-unfriendly cobbled streets, and are now trapped in the square. The bad guys, one group emerging from an ’80s Range Rover Classic, the others a moody Jaguar XF sedan, are pummelling the Aston’s bodywork with machine-gun fire.
“It’s quite scary when people are coming at you with guns,” says Higgins, now on his fifth Bond outing. “Quite eerie when the bullets are bashing on the windscreen.”
Fortunately for him, and connoisseurs of sacred collectibles the world over, the Aston is 100 percent bulletproof. That’s because the DB5 currently being filmed is no ordinary model. It’s one of eight visually identical replica DB5s commissioned especially for No Time to Die. Built by Aston Martin’s special projects division in conjunction with the movie’s head of stunt cars, Neil Layton, each comes with carbonfibre bodywork and a steel spaceframe chassis. Modern rally suspension, transmission, and modern straight-six 268kW engine are standard, too; proper Q-cars, then.
The Aston rep, however, refuses to reveal the origin of said powerplant, and probably wouldn’t even if one of Bond’s foes put a gun to his head (see sidebar, p70).
To withstand the various rigours of being a Bond stunt car, every replica is individually tweaked to suit a different scene: a car expected to perform a slide, for instance, will be specced differently to one involved in a high-speed chase. “The challenge here in Matera is you’ve got five or six different road surfaces that you’re adjusting the cars to all the time,” says Layton, who’s responsible for not just the DB5s, but 140-plus vehicles used in No Time to Die.
Mention Matera’s roads to Higgins and you’ll be met with a raised eyebrow and a wry smile worthy of any hammy Bond quip. On top of the contrasting surfaces, and all the problems that raises for stunt driving, the city’s streets and pavements are covered in a thin layer
Spiritually, the DB5 is the car that best captures the James Bond character; timeless, elegant, with a dab of upper-class ruffian
of dust, which is about as slippery as ice. The solution? Pour thousands of litres of Coca-Cola onto the roads to increase traction. “We spent about £70,000 [around A$135,000] on the stuff,” laughs Higgins. “The difference it makes is amazing, increasing grip levels by about 70 percent.”
A few multi-packs may be required this afternoon. Driving a stunt DB5, Higgins and his motion-control spots are scheduled to careen along a tiny street, and then drift into the piazza at high speed. The sequence is one of the juicy carrots the production company and Aston Martin used to lure Wheels to Italy. But one thing quickly learned about film sets is best-laid plans are often brutally laid to waste, even with a whispered production budget of around $2 million per day; even with 250 worker-bee crew members buzzing around.
As ominous black storm clouds gather over Matera’s rooftops, the crew are trying to record a scene in which Bond performs a doughnut in the DB5 while spraying his adversaries with bullets from headlight-concealed Gatling guns. In keeping with the general level of movie hocuspocus, the DB5 – now straddled with scaffold poles – is being pushed through 360 degrees by four crew members to mimic the doughnut; there’s a hulking IMAX camera attached to the car’s flank, and even someone as deft as Higgins can’t be trusted to pull off the manoeuvre without killing a million-dollar piece of filming equipment.
But some of the men are falling down on Matera’s notoriously slippery surfaces. Then the Gatling guns malfunction, dribbling bullets onto the piazza. Then rain stops play. The skies darken. The light levels are too poor to continue filming. We’re told we won’t get to see the drifting scene. Boo, hiss. We feel like throwing popcorn at someone.
WE THOUGHT THIS is where the curtain would come down on our Bond adventure. Then, a few months later, an email popped into the Wheels inbox, inviting us to another one-off event; this time driving one of the stunt DB5s used in No Time to Die, along with an original model, plus an ’80s Aston Martin V8, the latest DBS Superleggera and a $1.9 million Valhalla hypercar – not due for release until 2021 – thrown in for good measure (although the latter is strictly look don’t drive). All of which are set to feature in No Time To Die when it hits cinemas around the world.
The UK’s Silverstone track during a Northern Hemisphere winter feels several reincarnated lifetimes away from summer in Matera. It’s bone-shakingly cold on the morning we arrive, just above freezing. The landscape is exposed and bleak. Its only redeeming feature is
Aston Martin’s Test and Development Centre, which sits alongside Silverstone’s smaller Stowe circuit, where future Aston projects are put through their paces dynamically.
If 007 is the character around which the Bond series orbits, then Aston Martin is the marque at the centre of its universe – give or take a few hit-and-miss flirtations with Ford and BMW. And spiritually, the DB5 is the car that best captures the James Bond character; timeless, elegant, with a dab of upper-class ruffian. It was first driven by Sean Connery in 1964’s Goldfinger, followed by Thunderball in 1965, but then the 4.0-litre straight-six grand tourer mysteriously dropped out of favour – only to be resurrected in more recent years, most memorably in GoldenEye (1995), Casino Royale (2006) and then
Skyfall (2012).
Last August, a DB5 used to promote Thunderball sold