James Bond, everyone’s favorite womanizing martini enthusiast, is arguably best known for his gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5 that made star turns in Goldfinger and Thunderball. At Bond’s pushbutton command, it deployed such useful options as an ejector seat, machine guns, radar, and an oil-slick sprayer – crowd-pleasers all.
I was fascinated by Bond’s DB5 as a kid, and the highlight of any trip to visit my Aunt was the chance to play with my cousin’s Corgi model of the spymobile and activate its spring-loaded features – especially the ejection seat.
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Note how Corgi even captured the moment a baddie is about to put a 9mm hole in Bond before James shoots him out of the roof – Bond shot first, you might say.
I still love the spy-spec DB5 and its fantastical hardware today (who doesn’t?), but it would hardly fit my use case as someone who is, to be charitable, definitely not a spy, or smooth with the ladies, or attractive … (stop me anytime, gee whiz).
A bespoke gadget-ified car just for me would probably be a Mercedes C-Class, and for the gadgets, I’d like to be able to load Hot Pockets into the top of the dash like artillery rounds, which would feed into a microwave and be presented ready-to-eat at the touch of a button. I would also appreciate a set of pop-up headlights set into the trunk lid, so I may appropriately alert whoever the eff is high-beaming me that they are high-beaming me. Also, I would like massaging seats (those are already standard equipment, so that’s convenient), and you know what? Gimmie the front-bumper machine guns.
Your turn:
What Would Be Your ‘James Bond Car,’ And What Gadgets Would It Have?
Top graphic image: screen capture, United Artists
Just a showroom-stock AMC Hornet that can do the X-axis 360 over a creek.
Or, Archer’s Dodge Challenger. I promise not to leave it unlocked.
Or, Bond’s showroom-stock “Diamonds are Forever” Mustang that can drive through an alley on two wheels.
I don’t need gadgets. I do need a stunt driver, though.
Definitely the Hornet. Make mine a Sportabout instead of a hatchback coupe though.
Beige Lexus ES hybrid
Why? Because I’m a spy. I need to be invisible no matter which side of the tracks I’m on. A Lexcamry will do that perfectly.
(Plus its a damn nice car.)
Gadgets?
#1 A Licence to Kill with worldwide diplomatic immunity and a large stack of get out of jail free cards (duh!).
#2 Legendary weapons grade mojo.
#3 Unlimited expense budget. And I DO mean unlimited!
#4 Would I really need anything else?
DB5 and I’d settle for the invisible coating that no matter what you did or what was shot at you the vehicle always looked perfect
Only need two basic gadget groups:
The car: a lightly used Lamborghini Gallardo. I’ve just always liked these as an almost sensible daily driver if I were wealthy.
The gadgets: nothing too heavy. A rear-facing CO2 laser to stealthily (CO2 lasers emit light in the infrared spectrum) overheat the radiators of asshat tailgaters. And a lower-power forward-facing laser to raster messages to the left lane campers to “politely” ask them to move over.
You do realize the amount (perhaps 8-10 kW, looking at actual cooling requirements of lasers in my facility) of laser power required to overheat a radiator surpasses the electrical production of your car’s electrical system by several orders of magnitude?
Especially if it is British
JUST LET PEOPLE HAVE LASERS
Supercaps. Then I can have a fun countdown to the point where the system is charged up and ready to fire a pulse, just like the movies!
Pulse it.
Gold is an excellent reflector of 10.6 um. So if you find yourself sandwiched between Goldfinger and huge gold Rolls Royce full of disco dollies and a sex dwarf making it with the dumb chauffeur you’d best hold off.
That ’57 ElDorado with the included mini-bar, and I’d have Q slap in a penicillin supply. Make it like an STD-curing Pez dispenser, maybe with Queen’s head to make it official-looking.
Probably a Nissan Altima. As for gadgets? The Jatco Xtronic CVT is the only “gadget” I’ll need to make a clean getaway from lesser vehicles.
Nothing is faster than Big Altima Energy
How about the expiring warranty of a Altima?
The only thing faster than an Altima, is a rental Altima.
how about a plane? the Acrostar Jet – Bede BD-5J. so much fun!
If it’s a Bond car, from the movies, it’s the DB5, with a surprisingly close second to the bronze-ish Lotus Esprit Turbo in For Your Eyes Only. The one that doesn’t blow up.
For a “Bond car” for Hand…Rollin Hand…E39 M5. The gadget would be reliability. As we all know, with BMWs, the oil slick just comes with the car.
I designed a couple for my books. The one I’ll probably write resembles something of a hotrod crossed with a tailless P-47. It has a Browning M2 barrel concealed under an intake plenum with the gun and belts in a compartment between double firewalls (an earlier single seat version from an unfinished series had a M1919, but it was found to be a bit weak against the criminal org’s heavily armored vehicles). It uses an experimental composite armor developed from a couple guys at MIT, has impact bumpers on both ends and sides, smoke screen, hydraulic lifting front and rear suspension subframes, dazzle lights, and a compartment for recon drones.
In my first book, the criminal group ran cars equipped with South African anti-carjacking flamethrowers. The protagonist’s company car is a (E39) BMW M5 with the flamethrowers, re-badged as a lesser model with several sets of plates and matching stick-on VINs. The criminal org splits in two and the leader of one wing has an armored Brabus S-class, though that book isn’t out and may never be.
As a bonus vehicle, the animal series features a small speedboat with a sliding canopy used by the weapon smuggler the animals lived with to retrieve submersible shipments (based on an idea I had for a whale-safe lobster trap that was too expensive for lobstermen, but ended up popular with smugglers in the books after being invented by the character in the paragraph above). It also uses an experimental composite armor for the hull, ~B4-grade glass and composite for the canopy, and a pop up thermal spotlight.
I’d like to be able to instantly auto-adjust the window tint. That probably exists…maybe I just need a Rolls.
And some kind of hidden, directional spotlight for looking for addresses or blinding pursuit (including airborne).
Electrochromic glass. I believe MB offered it as an option on the SL’s hardtop a while back. It’s been discontinued AFAIK, but I don’t know if that’s low sales or issues with it.
Aside, as an adult, I enjoy the silliness of the DB5’s rear pop-up armor plate as a spy gadget. It must have weighed a ton (plus the machinery to raise it) and it would stop bullets from only one specific direction. It seemed, like most such things, designed to mostly provide dramatic visuals/sounds, as the bad guys never start trying to shoot through the window until it’s up.
Nothing was sillier than the Aston Martin Vanish from Die Another Day. That one was VERY Roger Moore.
And yet Pierce Brosnan was the one who drove it. I believe the story is that he enjoyed the Aston so much that he bought his own Vanquish, sans gadgets.
You mean something that isn’t an Aston Martin?
The Batmobile from “The Batman” movie. Gadgets? Caltrops, oil gun, emp emitter, and a jet booster
Big laser in the hood to get everything and everyone out of my way. Changing number plate because police
Gadget: a direct satellite link to a big frickin’ laser that’s in geosynch orbit.
All I have to do is send a snarkily coded command and the laser will vaporize the left lane hog(s) in front of me.
No debris on the roads, no callouts for overtaxed emergency services, everyone else gets where they’re going… It’s really the most reasonable approach.
First time ever a space laser has ever been described as the most reasonable approach
The car would have to be a Facel Vega. With its 350 hp Chrysler 383 Wedge, it would leave the bad guys in the dust. Besides everything the Aston had, I’d add a stocked champagne cooler and flutes, best suited for the final scenes.
There happens to be a rare 1961 Facel Vega HK 500 in bright silver (great color for Bond) at the Woodland Auto Display here in Paso Robles (woodlandautodisplay.com). They produced only 63 cars in 1961, split between these HK 500s and the FVII.
Come visit and see if you don’t agree.
You, Sir, are a man of taste. Although I would go for it’s rather more refined and somewhat thuggish British sibling. A Gordon Keeble
Is that some kind of cookie?
As long as Torch hasn’t pried off the turtle-swimming-in-pee logos.
I will send him the one I have one day, I have put it in my will!
I’ve been working on a book for a while that has a Facel Vega Facel II in it. It’s in a hidden garage storage in a Detroit safe house and the female protagonist kind of falls in love with it, but I don’t do much with it.
Well, if I’m a SPY on COVERT missions, I think I’d want something that BLENDS IN, while still able to get me out of trouble fairly quickly.
Golf Type R
Edit – And what technology? Death ray and cloaking device, What more does a spy need?
Edit: edit: and maybe a cannon that fires murder hornets. You never really hear about murder hornets anymore, so I thinks it’s time they make a comeback!
An all blacked out Golf R was my first thought too!
White Ford Transit. Secret weapon – stealth.
I always found it kind of funny that James Bond always drove a very flashy and distinctive car. (I know good for product placement but makes no sense for a real secret agent)
I always got a kick out of Magnum or Starsky and Hutch or whomever doing surveillance…sitting in the car a like a block or so away.
It was the ’70s. Everyone was too stoned to notice.
But then again everywhere he goes it’s Bond, James Bond. Not very secret if you tell everyone who you are
It follows the books. He mostly had Bentleys, but he did have an Aston Martin, though it was a DB MkIII. The cover story is that he’s a kind of rich playboy, but yeah, it’s mostly because it looks cool. Operationally, it’s too obvious whatever the cover. White contractor vans can go just about anywhere without question. Throw on some magnet sign of a plumbing or electrical company (or have sets of different ones) and it’s the automotive equivalent of a hard hat, vest, and a clip board.
“You made a time machine… out of a Chevy Express van?”
“Yes, it’ll blend in any setting for the past quarter century.”
I’m going with the ICONIC from Mazda. It’s got the looks, including the slick doors.
Gadgets?
Freakin’ Lasers for a start, front out of the headlights, plus rear and sides – full level-5 driving so the car can drive itself while the driver aims the weapons, and since we’re living in the age of CGI, let’s give the car a hover mode too.
To get the bad guys, a fleet of quasi-independent attack drones that pop out of the back hatch on command.
Inside it’s got to have on-board radar, satellite coms, and of course a fully equipped mini bar that flips out of the dash.
https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/0eNYLk/s3/mazda-iconic-sp-concept.jpg