Bond Cars, the Definitive History
JASON BARLOW, BBC Books, £20, ISBN 978 1 78594 514 4
If you’re wondering why we’ve chosen to use the image, above, of a Mercedes 280SE rolling down a cliff after it has just been given a helpful kick by Roger Moore (Bond disposing of villain Emile Locque in For Your
Eyes Only), rather than a pic of, say, a white Esprit S1 or a Silver Birch DB5 – well, don’t fret: all the usual suspects are fully documented here, too. But author Barlow is as interested in the supporting automotive players as he is in the ‘hero’ cars, so this 335-page hardback is also a goldmine of information on all the sometimes barely visible stuff that we petrolheads love to spot.
The book’s other USP is that Barlow was given unprecedented access to Bond film-maker EON Productions’ huge photo archive. This piece of good fortune means that there are dozens of images that you will never have seen – a second white Esprit being used as a camera tracking platform in The Spy
Who Loved Me, for example, the cameraman literally perched on top of its engine as it drives along.
Then there’s all the production ephemera: original call sheets, story boards, correspondence, blueprints… There are some real gems of trivia here: a memo from the making of the first Bond film,
Dr No, shows that a local resident in Jamaica, a Miss Jennifer Jackson of 53 Lady Musgrave Road, was to be paid £10 per day for the use of her Sunbeam Alpine by Sean Connery – the first ‘Bond car’ and the first one to appear in a Bond movie car chase.
It’s not just a photo album, however. Barlow’s text is sharply written yet full of detail and engaging asides, with contributions from many of the drivers, stunt arrangers, actors and all the other hundreds of people who are involved with making a Bond film. He even manages to get quotes from Bond himself: Daniel Craig tells him that his favourite Bond car is the Toyota 2000GT from You Only Live Twice ,but the DBS in Casino Royale was also ‘a special car… I got to drive those quite a lot. They were a lot of fun.’
Which brings us to another feather in this book’s metaphorical cap: Barlow spoke with Craig while on set for the yet-to-be-released No Time to Die. Because of the pandemic, his book has appeared well before the movie and it contains a full chapter on the vehicles that will appear in it. A cameo from an Aston Martin Valhalla is one of the tantalising titbits that Barlow has teased out – and, yes, there’s even a photo.
Is it the ‘definitive history’ claimed by its title? With such a massive subject, there will always be more to say – there’s no attempt to identify all the myriad DB5s that have been used over the decades, or mention of the Porsche 928 used to dummy up a wrecked DB5 in Skyfall (see Octane 116 for info on both). But it’s the best book on Bond cars yet – and it retails for just £20. An absolute bargain.