Top Gear Explores 50 Years of Bond Cars
In anticipation of the upcoming Bond film Skyfall, Top Gear has put together a fantastic retrospective of the history of James Bond’s wheeled vehicles, from Dr. No to the present day. Presented by Richard Hammond, the program covers a variety of topics, from Bond’s traditional association with Aston Martin, to the famous spiral stunt in The Man with the Golden Gun, through the “low point of Bond cars” when the British superspy drove BMWs for three installments, and on to the current Daniel Craig films.
The program also dovetails nicely with my previous post on the early Lotus Esprit, as it was a Bond car for two movies and transformed into a submarine for one. That last bit of trickery was depicted using models in the film, but for the show Hammond has an actual real-life Lotus reconfigured into a submarine, and tests it in a reservoir to examine whether that particular bit of Bond lore could really happen. Well worth watching if you have an hour to spare.