Bond cars licensed to thrill at London museum

AT the London Film Museum just about all the Bond cars you ever wanted to see are yours for $25 admission.

The Jaguar XKR from Die Another Day. Picture: Getty Images

AROUND the corner from Balthazar in London’s Covent Garden is the little known London Film Museum. You need to know about this gem of a basement space because for the next nine months just about all the Bond cars you ever wanted to see are yours for $25.

I found out it was there only because I walked the wrong way out of Balthazar after a long lunch involving a couple of bottles of Montrachet and a couple of follow-up grappa cleansers. As you can imagine I wasn’t paying. No, it was the first time in all the years writing this column that a motoring PR person, and a very attractive PR person at that, has bought me a meal.

If someone else is paying then you should go to Balthazar. Keith McNally, the son of a London dock worker, went to New York 30 years ago and has had enormous success opening imitation French and Italian eateries. No surprise then that he has opened an imitation of his New York-based imitation French bistro, Balthazar, in London.

So there’s the Roller from Goldfinger, the heavily weaponised Aston from Die Another Day, the Cougar from OHMSS (no, not Diana Rigg), the Mustang from Diamonds are Forever, a collection of bikes, autogyros, mini jets and my favourite, at that time of the afternoon, a crocodile submarine.

Bond has been good for car lovers and good for the producers.

The 23 films, if you don’t include the wonderful 1967 Casino Royale, have grossed $14 billion. More than 30 car brands have featured. Alongside the Astons, Fords, GMs, Rollers, Bentleys and Mercs have been lesser known stars like AMC (Hornet and Matador) Lada, Simca, AutoVAZ and yes, even some Alfas.

But the forgotten star is the Sunbeam Alpine series II convertible from Dr No. Remember the scene where the greatest Bond, Sean Connery, looks in the rear window and sees a big black La Salle hearse trying to push him over a cliff?

In 2008 Car and Driver tested some of James Bond’s rides. Journalist Steve Biler concluded “When we reviewed our test data for some of James Bond’s coolest cars, we found that Bond’s rides have seldom been the fastest cars of their time, and some of them couldn’t catch a bad guy on a bicycle. This could explain why some of those chase scenes take so long.”

There’s a reason Bond producers need carmakers’ assistance. They write off a lot of cars. So you’ll notice nothing bad happened to the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud in A View to a Kill. That’s because it was producer Chubby Broccoli’s own drive. Meanwhile in Die Another Day Aston Martin gave Pierce Brosnan seven Vanquishes; four were re-engined and two were destroyed. For Tomorrow Never Dies BMW came good with 17 cars and eight motorbikes. Boat makers fared just as badly. Glastron gave Roger Moore 26 speed boats to drive in Live and Let Die. Rog and crew sank 17 of them.

Boat and car heads should look at Wet Nellie, the submarine Lotus Esprit in The Spy Who Loved Me. It was used to promote the movie, then stored in a locker. When the lease expired, the tenant couldn’t be found. In 1989, a couple paid $100 for the contents of the locker. Last year RM Auctions sold it to the Ian Fleming Foundation for $1 million.

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