James Bond’s Cars - the Fleming era

Although James Bond will forever be associated with Aston Martin, the literary character is very much a Bentley man. The first time we meet him in Casino Royale, Bond is driving one, and while he is to be found behind the wheel of a secret service Aston Martin in Goldfinger, he owns a total of three Bentleys in Ian Fleming’s books.

Bond’s first Bentley is a 4½-litre Convertible coupé in battleship grey with an Amherst Villiers supercharger. This particular model was known as the “blower Bentley”, developed specifically for racing. With a huge supercharger mounted on its nose and large French Marchal headlamps it certainly was distinctive looking, although rather unsuccessful as a racer.

According to Casino Royale, Bond bought the car in 1933 and had kept it in storage during the Second World War. However, in You Only Live Twice - published eleven years after Casino Royale in 1964 - we learn that he joined the armed forces in 1941, when he was 17. How he bought his first car at nine remains one of the great mysteries of the series.

Although the car was badly damaged in Casino Royale, repairs were made in time for Moonraker. Its reappearance was short-lived though, as the car was soon wrecked by the release of fourteen tons of newsprint from the back of a lorry. Bond must have cursed his luck as only 54 blowers were ever made. At the end of Moonraker, Bond purchases his second Bentley, a new 1953 Mark VI with an open touring body. Again it was battleship grey with dark blue leather upholstery. After a test-drive Bond agrees to buy the car on the condition that it is at the Calais ferry terminal the following evening. Quite a different car from the blower, Fleming never referred to the Mark VI again and it too must remain a mystery.

James Bond’s final Bentley first appears in 1961’s Thunderball. Having bought the wreck of a Mark II Continental with the R-Type chassis - its previous owner had written it off against a telegraph pole - he had the chassis straightened and upgraded the engine to the Mark IV. Bond also commissioned Mulliners to remove the original sports saloon body and transform the car into a rather square two-seater convertible - in those days it was common to commission coachbuilders such as Mulliners to design and build car bodies. Again the car is battleship grey, this time upholstered in black leather. Bond’s customisation doesn’t end there though, as the car is fitted with two-inch exhaust pipes and a big octagonal silver bolt in place of the Bentley winged B.

Two years later in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service we find the same Bentley with a new improvement. Although Rolls Royce had advised Bond that the crankshaft bearings wouldn’t cope with the additional strain, he had fitted an Arnott supercharger controlled by a magnetic clutch. Bond finally gets a chance to try his new toy on the way to Royale-Les-Eaux while racing a girl headed the same way. Activating the supercharger by flipping up a red switch on the dash, he takes the car up to 125 mph - the engine is undamaged and the girl eventually becomes Mrs Bond.

In fact Ian Fleming had written to Rolls Royce back in 1957 requesting information for Bond’s new car. Wanting a hybrid somewhere between a Bentley Continental and the Ford Thunderbird – Fleming owned two Thunderbirds in succession – he was directed to Mulliners, who had been commissioned for a similar project. When the Mulliners design proved too expensive, the Portuguese owner chose Henri Capron to build the car in France instead. The resulting car is perhaps closer to Fleming’s request than the Mulliners design, with a long Thunderbird-like boot.

When not in his own car, 007 is sometimes reduced to borrowing or renting his transport, and on one occasion even driving a company car. When he arrives in Jamaica in Live And Let Die, for instance, he drives an unspecified small car brought up from Kingston by Quarrel, a Cayman islander who assists him on his mission. In Dr No, again accompanied by Quarrel, he drives the black Sunbeam Alpine belonging to Commander Strangways - whose disappearance Bond is sent to investigate - which also appears in The Man With The Golden Gun. And in the short story From A View To A Kill he borrows a battered black Peugeot 403, as well as making a brief appearance on the two wheels of a Royal Corps of Signals BSA.

It is in Goldfinger, though, when at long last we find him in an Aston Martin provided to him by his employer. From Kent he tails Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce across the English Channel and through France into Switzerland. The Aston Martin is fitted with a number of extras by Q branch, although nothing like the ejector seat fitted to the DB5 in the film. Described as a battleship grey DB III, it is more correctly an Aston Martin DB Mark III – the third incarnation of the DB 2/4 which had a new front grill based on that of the DB3S racing car. But for all the association we have for James Bond and Aston Martin, the car fails to reappear in the books.

Crossing the Atlantic, Bond pours scorn on American cars whenever the opportunity arises. In The Living Daylights he compares drab West Berlin’s glossy veneer with the chrome trim on American cars and although he appears impressed when Felix Leiter drives an old Cord in Live And Let Die - Bond considers it has personality compared with other American cars – he is quick to point out the faults of Leiter’s car in Diamonds Are Forever. However, this is short-lived – when Leiter floors the throttle of his “Studillac” Bond is stunned by the acceleration.

Although the Studillac sounds like pure fantasy, Fleming had come across a similar car owned by William Woodward Jr, who he met while staying with mutual friend Ivar Bryce on a research trip for Diamonds Are Forever. The Studillac was the product of renowned French designer Raymond Loewy, who was also responsible for such icons as the packaging of Lucky Strike cigarettes, the Greyhound bus and the Shell logo. The car consisted of a Studebaker with modified suspension and a powerful Cadillac engine. According to Andrew Lycett’s biography, Fleming was pulled over by the local sheriff while test-driving Woodward’s car; he was let off when the sheriff could barely understand his upper-crust English accent.

Ian Fleming’s whole attitude to American cars was very different to that of his creation and when he received £6,000 for the film rights to Casino Royale, Fleming had immediately bought a Ford Thunderbird. He loved the car so much that he bought another to replace it and appears to have been so obsessed by it that that his wife even nicknamed Fleming “Thunderbird”. Bond drives a hired Thunderbird in The Spy Who Loved Me - actually the only reason that he is involved in the story is because of a puncture - and it is surely no coincidence that Fleming named the hotel in The Man With The Golden Gun after the car.

Nevertheless, after his second Thunderbird Fleming decided a change was called for. His final car was a black Studebaker Avanti, a fibreglass-bodied model also designed by Raymond Loewy.

 

 

This article was originally published in Titan’s The Golden Ghost comic book, available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

 

 

 

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