"The Real James Bond Cars" – with Top Gear's Jason Barlow

Andrew Hammond: Welcome to SpyCast, the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Hammond, the museum's historian and curator. Each week we explore some aspect of the past, present, or future of intelligence and espionage. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a five star review. It will really help other listeners find us and will take less than a minute of your time. Coming up next on SpyCast.

Jason Barlow: Basically, she gave me the case to the archive, and we just went through everything and sourced all the- it wasn't just images of cars, it was also coal sheets, discarded documents. To me, these were just priceless pieces of history. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: This week, I was joined by Jason Barlow, longstanding editor at large for BBC's Top Gear. Jason has spent over two decades writing for Top Gear and British GQ, as well as appearing in many other publications and television programs. He's the author of The Definitive Guide to James Bond's Cars, which is the ultimate guide to every single vehicle ever driven by 007. Aston Martin's, Jaguars, BMWs, you name it, Jason has probably sat behind the wheel and given it some welly, as we say back home. And if that wasn't enough to entice you, Jason is a previous winner of Spectacle Wearer of the Year. In this episode, Jason and I discuss how the Bond car phenomenon came to be, Ian Fleming's love for cars, the different nationalities of Bond's cars, and what it's like to be behind the wheel of some of the most iconic cars in movie history. The original podcast on intelligence since 2006, we are SpyCast. Now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. It is a pleasure to speak to you, Jason. Thanks ever so much for joining me this morning.

Jason Barlow: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. Pleasure to see you, and a pleasure to hear the Scottish accent.

Andrew Hammond: Thank you. It's nice to hear you're- you haven't completely lost your Northern Irish accent after 35 years in England. I thought that a good place to start off in your book on Bond cars, the Definitive Guide to Bond Cars, you say what elements define a great Bond film? The glamorous locations, the action, Bond's female co-stars, the villain, and of course, the car. So I think that for most people that are listening to this, that is very much part of the architecture. So I think the first question I wanted to ask was, how did this happen? Was this a happenstance? Was it an evolutionary thing? Was it designed to be, we're going to make these movies and we're going to make the car central feature? Help us understand how the Bond car came to be "a thing"?

Jason Barlow: Oh, that's an excellent question. Do you know ITV, which is one of the three- well, God, no. There's numerous channels now but, you know, those of us of a certain age we'll recall at this time of year as well we've just had Easter. I associate this time of year with watching movies and more often than not Bond films, and From Russia with Love was on the other day And as I like to do, I just dip in. And I've seen the film maybe 10 times over the years, but I just dipped into it and it was a sequence that was set in Istanbul, and the bad guys were in a Citroen Traction Avant. Robert Shaw's character was in a Plymouth Belvedere. I think I only know that because I had to -- I researched that when I was working on the book, and it's the second Bond film. And at that stage of the process, I don't think the producers were thinking -- they were thinking about -- okay, they were obviously thinking we've got Connery as Bond. Some of the series staples were already in place but I think Daniela Bianchi was the Bond, in inverted commas, woman, Bond girl that point in time. As I say, Robert Shaw was the villain. I think the villainess was the lady with the metal spikes in her shoes. So in those very early films, it's all there, but it's interesting you use the word evolutionary. At that point, I think, yes, it was more by accident than design. Obviously, Ken Adam, who's -- the late great Ken Adam, is one of the great production designers in cinema. Nothing was ever accidental in anything that Ken was involved in. But in terms of the wider production design in the very early -- certainly the first two films, I don't think they were thinking, right, what car should we cast? That didn't really happen until Goldfinger and of course, the introduction of the Aston Martin DB5 when Ken Adam and the other members of the production design team, they did look at it much more seriously. John Stears, he was the production designer on Goldfinger. He would go on to be the guy who did the production design in the first Star Wars film. So in some senses, he's the father of R2-D2 and C-3PO as well, which I love. But yeah. So John Stears working with Ken Adam, they decided that they needed a car. They needed something like the Aston Martin DB5. They actually did go and have a conversation with Aston Martin who rebuffed him initially. Clearly didn't recognize a copper bottoms production placement opportunity. But they got it in the end. I think it's fair to say, I mean, Aston Martin's finances at that time were pretty fragile, so they were probably just desperately trying to keep the lights of the factory on, keep everything taken over. But yeah. You know, Goldfinger was -- it was -- yeah. It was the first Bond film where the car was as much a star as the human beings who were in the film. And it chimed with, you know, the Beatles, Swinging Sixties were starting the whole thing. Culturally, there was a kind of -- there was a big bang happening, and the film, and the car, and the music, and the milieu, all of it, it all happened, it all cohered. But as was so often the case, you know, you couldn't really -- you couldn't sit down and design that sort of thing. So the degree of happenstance, you know, it so happened that when Goldfinger opened I think in September '64, yeah, you know, Britain was swinging and there was a big pop cultural thing going on. We had the band, we had the Beatles, we had the Stones, we had Sean Connery. You know, it all kind of resonated, but no one could have sat down and said, right, this is what's going to happen. You don't -- you know, these things don't -- you know, it is more happenstance.

Andrew Hammond: That's interesting. So one thing, which also, you know, bring up in your book is that Fleming was a car man and in the books anyway, he makes Bond a car man. So you have this great quote from Casino Royale, Bond's car was his only personal hobby, one of the last of the 4 and 1/2 Liter Bentleys with the supercharger by Amherst Villiers et cetera, et cetera. So tell us a bit more about Fleming as a car man.

Jason Barlow: Oh, Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming was an everything man. I think he was a bon viveur, you know, he lived life to the full. I think he'd done- you know, had been in the intelligence industry, had seen a lot of interesting things. He liked living life to the full. I think, you know, he was -- I'm trying to -- I wouldn't describe him as a bit of a card, really. I don't know. I mean, he liked women. He liked fine wine. It's tempting to see the first movie iteration of 007 as being very much Ian Fleming in that mold, really. I think that would be a little bit reductive. But yeah, for sure he loved cars. And Amherst Villiers was a friend of his, who, if memory serves, was also something of a kind of renaissance figure, and was an artist as well as an engineer. Phenomenal character, you know, and as so many of them were in that period.

Andrew Hammond: So Amherst Villiers is a person?

Jason Barlow: Yeah. Yeah. He was quite the character. He was an automotive, aeronautical, and astronautical engineer. And also a portrait painter. That's the bit I love. You know, I'm intrigued by people who can do -- it's one thing to be an, you know, aeronautical engineer, an automotive engineer, whatever, but he was an incredibly gifted portrait artist as well. And I believe Ian Fleming had one of his portraits hanging in his living room wall, I think. Amongst other things, he designed Malcolm Campbell's record breaking car and developed the supercharger for the famous Blower Bentley, which was driven by Bond in one of the novels. Yeah, remarkable man.

Andrew Hammond: And this is an actual car that Fleming is describing, and the Casino Royale, a 4 and 1/2 Liter Bentley with a supercharger by Amherst Villiers.

Jason Barlow: Correct. Yeah. And Amherst Villiers -- Charles Amherst Villiers, so he was the guy who was the engineer who basically oversaw the development of the Blower Bentley, which was to this day, remains one of the most famous Bentleys in the company's history. Famously also raced by a guy called Tim Birkin. I think at that time in the UK, you know, there were a lot of -- these guys were quite aristocratic, well educated, and enjoyed life, but also, you know, gave quite a lot as well. I mean, quite often a lot of them were -- you know, they would end up in the RAF, or the Army, or in military intelligence. I mean, Ian Fleming might've been in the -- you know, in creating 007, was a kind of an extension of his personality, and reflected a lot of his achievements and some of his experiences in the Second World War. Amherst Villiers, I think was just a great engineer, but, you know, it's tempting to say. You know, we just don't -- we don't make them like we used to, you know, the characters like Ian Fleming and Charles Amherst Villiers. Yeah. It's hard to think of a contemporary analog for those kinds of individuals.

Andrew Hammond: So just going back to our earlier question, it sounds like it's really the Aston Martin DB5 and Goldfinger that makes the Bond car a thing. And obviously there's a number of other factors that feed into that. Like you say, timing, just all the stars seem to align at the right time. But tell us a little bit more about this Aston Martin DB5. So I used to have the toy version, I'm sure you did, or I'm sure lots of our listeners did. Tell us a little bit more about that car as, you know, editor for Top Gear. Like I just know it on a very surface level. It's a beautiful looking car. It's got gadgets, but tell us a little bit more about this as a car, as a vehicle.

Jason Barlow: Well, so much of the Aston Martin DB5 it's inextricably linked with Goldfinger and Thunderball as well. It appeared in that and indeed returned racing a Ferrari F355 somewhat implausibly. But in GoldenEye, although implausibility, if we start talking about things in Bond films that were implausible, we'd be here a long time. Yeah. No, the DB5, one thing that interests me about that is it's widely regarded as the kind of quintessential British sports car, certainly one of the late '50s and the 1960s. But its body work was designed by an Italian carrozzeria, that's Italian for coachbuilder, called Touring Superleggera, who also derived their techniques from early days of aviation. And Superleggera is Italian for super light, and the aluminum in the body would've been quite thin. There were different versions- you know, the DB5 was part of a bloodline. DB stands for David Brown, who is an agricultural machinery magnet, who was one of the owners of Aston Martin, which as a company, has flirted with fiscal financial disaster innumerable times in its long history. David Brown was the savior at the time. I think he bought the company, I think in the late '40s or early '50s, and the DB car is named in honor of him. Yeah. The five came along in late '63, early '64. It was basically an evolution of the DB4. More powerful engine. I think memory serves, 286 brake horsepower, six cylinder engine. I've driven quite a few of them.

Andrew Hammond: Oh, you have? Wow. What's it like?

Jason Barlow: You will sense by the hesitation here. I mean, I wouldn't say, you know, the way they always say, don't meet your heroes. I mean, that actually I've met quite a lot of my heroes, and not many of them have disappointed me in the human sort. No. It's a very charismatic -- you cannot drive an Aston Martin DB5 and not feel special. Whether you entertain notions of Ben, James Bond or not, I wouldn't comment. But it's very much a car of its time. You know, the classic cars of that period, it's almost always the brakes that are challenging. Also, it has quite an outsized steering wheel. So remember, you know, you do quite a lot of sewing at the wheel. I remember when I was a kid watching movies and wondering why the people driving the cars. I remember saying to my dad, why is he -- they're going in a straight line but the guy is sewing away at the steering wheel. And then you drive a car from the '50s or early '60s, and you realize actually even going in a straight line doesn't necessitate a certain amount of movement at the steering wheel, but it's all part of it. You know, they're wildly charismatic. They're pretty quick, you know, a modern day hot hatch or nine in 2024. You know, an electric car, even a fairly regular Tesla, and plenty of other EVs would absolutely, you know, just disappear compared to the pace of a '64, '65 Aston Martin DB5. But that isn't really the point. You know, everything you do in a car like that is -- you feel like you're an integral part of a process. You have to think very carefully. The control weights are very deliberate. So when you change gear, you have to think about it. Personally, I adore driving classic cars because of that, because you're much more involved in the process. It is not something you can do absent mindedly. But I tell you, having driven, I think I've driven three or four different DB5s, and it's certainly- it's given me a newfound respect for the work that stunt drivers did when they were shooting those films and those sequences.

Andrew Hammond: Not as easy as it looks.

Jason Barlow: No. Absolutely not.

Andrew Hammond: And let's discuss the Britishness, I guess, of Aston Martin and some of the Bond cars. So I want to discuss another few different Bond cars, but I think that because this is the iconic one and the breakthrough one, it's worth spending just a little bit more time on it. So it seems to me that, you know, the Aston Martin DB5, in some ways there's a metaphor in there for- if you think about the Bond movies, the decline of the slow kind of relative decline of Britain on the world stage, you know, post empire people have written about this, well, sure, the empire's gone and we don't have as much power as we used to, but we've got people like James Bond. Could you say the same thing? We don't have all of that, but we've got things like the Aston Martin DB5. We may not have Ford or Hyundai, or Golf, or Volkswagen, or any of these types of things, but we've got some real Humdinger classic cars. I'm just wondering if the Aston Martin DB5 and the iconic nature of it tells us something about the role of Britain in the post-war world stage. Sorry. Big question. And there's no right answer, obviously.

Jason Barlow: No. But you're right. And I think Bond and Aston Martin, you know, in the latter Bond films, the last two or three, I think M, as played by Judi Dench, had that little porcelain bulldog, didn't she? Which I think is left upon her passing, it's gifted to Bond, and he makes some, you know, typically sarcastic Bond kind of quip about that. That's what she leaves him. You know, and that is obviously hugely symbolic. And yeah. Plenty of people have written about the Bond franchise and what it represents, and whether it is some kind of last desperate cry into the wilderness of a post-imperial world. In terms of pop culture which I think is a more realistic area to explore, I would say that Britain has probably contributed more. And so for a small island, it's punched massively above its wet. You know, personally I think many of the best films, some of the best fashion, some great cars, I mean, you talked about, and we know that there aren't many kind of, if any, independent British car makers left, certainly none that could compete with giant corporation like Hyundai or Toyota in Japan. But Bond is a prime example of the contribution that the country has made in terms of pop culture. Again, the Beatles, there's literally hundreds of bands I can name because I'm a huge music fan, and maybe Aston Martin as well. As I said, you know, personally, I'm glad that it's still around. I don't really -- I think its cars are pretty good. Some Italian car makers in that area are probably objectively speaking superior. But I think the world is a much richer place for companies like Aston Martin and still being around and doing what they do with a degree of idiosyncrasy. You know, that's another quintessentially British thing, isn't it? To kind of perhaps not stand up so well to coldly rational objective analysis, but actually to be really, really fantastically cool in every other respect. So yeah. I guess Bond is tied up with that, and Aston Martin too. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: To get a better idea of the cultural context in which Goldfinger and the Aston Martin DB5 lived, here's a brief time capsule of 1964, specifically through a British lens. As we've mentioned, the swinging '60s were an interesting crossroads for the British. Imperial Britain was in retreat, and the relatively small islands were pumping out an enormous amount of popular culture that we wanted to find the country in the latter half of the 20th century and redefined the landscape of popular music. Let's go through a couple of highlights. Music was on a golden age. The Who were just formed in London, Beatlemania would hit the States with their appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, and the Rolling Stones were, well, the Rolling Stone. Bands like the Zombies, the Yardbirds, the Animals, and the Kinks solidified and strengthened the British invasion, a wave of youth counterculture that reached far beyond the British eye. At the same time, Britain was losing its lands across the world, Malta gained independence in September, and Northern Rhodesia was declared the Republic of Zambia in October. Symbols of days gone by were slowly fading. Winston Churchill made his last appearance in the House of Commons in July of 1964 at the age of 89. Across the Atlantic, President Lyndon B. Johnston signed the Civil Rights Act into law, pushing the UK to pass a similar piece of legislation, the Race Relations Act, the following year. We could go on for the rest of the episode with critical moments and pieces of time from the year that was 1964. But I think you get the general picture. Goldfingers releasing the Aston Martin DB5 were born into this world, a world with one foot firmly in the future, and one struggling to stay planted in the past. [ Music ] So you've driven cars from all of the Bond movies. So let's get down to the stuff that you're probably most excited about. What is the best one to drive? What's your favorite? If someone said to you, we're going to give you one of these, which one would it be?

Jason Barlow: Well, I have a slight confession to make here, which is I actually I do co-own a car that features prominently in a Bond film, which is a Ferrari F355.

Andrew Hammond: Oh, wow.

Jason Barlow: Yeah. So I guess I probably would say that, you know, because I do co-own it. I have the key. I actually don't have the car. It's not in my garage right now because as I say, it's like a, you know, post-divorce thing. I've got custody kind of arrangement with a friend. Now a friend and I, we were able to pick up a 355 about 15 years ago for let's say, a very competitive figure. But Italian sports cars are renowned for being expensive to run and maintain. So it is a punishingly expensive car to keep on top of. But yeah, 355, that's driven by Famke Janssen's character Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye. That's the one I referred to earlier on in the pre-credit sequence of GoldenEye. She is seen jeweling with Pierce Brosnan, who's in the DB5, and I think on the hills somewhere above Monte Carlo. So yeah. That's a fantastic car. But Ferrari, interestingly, as far as I can recall, that is the one and only Ferrari that's ever appeared in the entire -- in all 25 Bond films. You would think such a glamorous kind of nameplate is that would appear more often. But actually, it's a relatively rare car in the films. The other one I really love is the Lotus Esprit, which was the submersible one from The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977. A really well sorted Series 1 Lotus Esprit. It's not very powerful, only got a four cylinder engine, but a cloth in a body designed by an Italian designer called Giorgetto Giugiaro who pioneered a kind of what car designers talk about is a wedge silhouette. I mean, for obvious reasons if you look at it, it does look pretty wedgie like a dart. Yeah. And I think- no. The first Bond film I saw was Moonraker, and The Spy Who Loved Me was the film that preceded Moonraker. But the first Bond car that I have a very vivid memory of is the Lotus Esprit. So in some respects, it's maybe more resonant than the DB5.

Andrew Hammond: And tell us a bit more about the Ferrari compared to the Lotus Esprit. Like how do both of them handle? What are their top speeds? Like give us some top gear on both of those cars.

Jason Barlow: I mean the by modern standards, the Esprit, you know, the Esprit was launched I think off the top of my head, 1975. Lotus has always aspired to be the kind of British equivalent of Ferrari. It's another company, you know, we talk about -- I don't know whether it's part of the British DNA. I guess there is this sort of sense of being a plucky underdog, and I've already described Aston Martin in those terms. And I think it applies even more to Lotus, which is a company that's -- whose fortunes have waxed and wind over the years since the company was founded in the, I think, mid-1950s. The Esprit is -- I don't want to get too nerdy about it, but modern cars, when I say modern cars, contemporary cars, I mean, cars of 2024. They're almost all too heavy, electric cars in particular, because batteries are incredibly heavy and they're supporting structure you need. So a lot of even supposedly agile sports cars weigh too much. But the Lotus Esprit, which in its earliest form only had 160 brake horsepower from a 2-liter four cylinder engine. You know, nobody would get excited. Even in the mid '70s, I think people would struggle to get excited by 160 brake horsepower. And yet, because the car was so light, and this was the thing that the company founder Colin Chapman, was obsessed with. One of his mantras was simplify and then add likeness which was a mantra he applied very successfully, although sometimes controversially to the Formula 1 cars that is team ran in the '60s and '70s. The Esprit to me, it looks like some -- still looks like something from the future. The '70s was a very forward thinking time for automotive design. As I say, this car was designed by Giugiaro who's probably what I think possibly the greatest car designer of all time. The Ferrari F355, while you have to rule on 20 years that was launched, it's actually 30 years old this year. It appeared in the summer of 1994. Three hundred and seventy five brake horsepower, 3 and 1/2 liter V8 engine with a five valve head. So 40 valves in total. Its body was designed by Pininfarina, who's one of the great Italian coach building names. It's still an astonishingly pretty lisam looking car, just beautifully proportioned. And again, doesn't weigh that much. So it's highly entertaining to drive. And at about 4,000 RPM in third gear, I honestly think it's probably -- and I'm not alone here, some people think it might be the greatest sounding car of all time. I mean, at 4,000 RPM in third gear, you want to find a tunnel to drive through, because when that thing is singing, it really does sound exquisite.

Andrew Hammond: Looking through the -- at the back of the book, looking through the different cars that have been in the Bond movies, I'm not saying -- I could be wrong., but I'm not saying anything that's not European or North American. Is there like any kind of design behind that or what's going on there? That just happenstance?

Jason Barlow: Well, actually, you're missing out You Only Live Twice. So 1967s entry in the James Bond film series You Only Live Twice, which is an unusual film, actually. I think by contemporary standards, we would definitely have to level some charges of cultural appropriation at the filmmakers here. There's some ill-advised stuff in this film. But what's interesting is that Japan was having a major moment in the late '60s. The economy was just going crazy over there and one of the industries- I mean, probably the thing we would most think of, I think the Olympics were held in Tokyo in 1964. I understand that was the first time a satellite broadcaster or satellite broadcasting happened around the Olympics that year. There were some phenomenal modernist buildings opening in Japan. The country in general was just opening up, and it was beginning to forge the reputation for technology leadership and thought leadership that would really be developed throughout the '70s and into the 1980s. And then of course, we had the bubble economy, and then everything got much more difficult for 10 years. And the automotive industry was another reflection of that. So the fact that Bond's, you know, the producers chose to set some of the action in Japan for that film, personally, I think it gives the film an incredible aesthetic. And to get to your point about the lack of Asian cars, I mean, predominantly European and American cars in the Bond series, '67s, You Only Live Twice, the star car is a Toyota 2000GT. And I can tell you that I was lucky enough to interview Daniel Craig two or three times, and I asked him what his favorite Bond car was, and without hesitation, he said, ''What was the white one? The white one in You Only Live Twice.'' And I went, ''The Toyota 2000GT.'' And he went, ''That one, I love that car.'' The reason why it's a convertible, there was never a convertible version of it officially. They built two for the film. I think 303 coupes were manufactured roughly. But Sean Connery being I think 6 foot 2 and 1/2, 6 foot 3, couldn't actually fit in the 2000GT. So they got around up by turning it into a convertible. They got the --

Andrew Hammond: Is that right?

Jason Barlow: Yeah. They got the chainsaw out and just did, I mean, a nice job. I mean, obviously chopping the roof off a car does horrendous things to structural rigidity unless you reinforce the bulkhead and the doors and all the rest of it. Not sure they got around to doing that, but they created a very pretty looking car.

Andrew Hammond: And what were some of the other- did you interview some other Bond actors and did they have a favorite Bond car?

Jason Barlow: None of the other actors. No. Chris Corbould, who's the longstanding I think stump -- he's not really the -- I mean, Chris oversees all aspects of -- I mean, his first Bond film was the Spy Who Loved Me in '77. You know, and he's not that old, so I think he was only like 16 when he -- 16 or 17, I think. Chris is very fond of the Aston Martin DB5. I think Barbara Broccoli, who I've interviewed a couple of times and met a few times. Yeah. They're all very keen on the DB5. What's interesting is the pattern in the last 20 years or more as, you know, making a major film. I mean, I believe that No Time To Die, the most recent Bond film, from what I can gather, it costs $250 million to make. These are not cheap films, for all the reasons that we know, the locations. You know, I think Daniel Craig was on a good wedge by that point. You know, they're massively expensive films to make. So the producers have struck production deals with -- you know, a lot of people are a little unhappy, you know, and occasionally it's -- you know, in Casino Royale, there's a sequence where we see Donald Craig driving the then New Ford Mondeo because he and the producers had a big deal with a Ford Motor Company at that point in time. And yeah. You know, and then I think in Quantum of Solace, we see them in a Ford car, and it's a little much perhaps but it's all part of -- it's how they finance these films. You know, they have to get the budget from somewhere. In no time to die, think one of the things that amused me is there's a series of -- I think there were nine Land Rover defenders used in the big car chase set piece. And the villains henchmen are all driving black Defenders and Bond is trying to make his escape in a rather car worn, battered Toyota Land Cruiser. And I just thought that was quite amusing, really. I happened to watch the film in the company of some executives from Jaguar or Land Rover, who were -- yeah. They went, did we know he was going to be driving a Toyota? You know, so they stump up like multimillions to get their car showcased in the film, and then 007 is in a rather tired looking Toyota. I just thought that was -- it did amuse me. But yeah. The, you know, BMW supplied the cars to the films in the 1990s. Actually, one of my other favorites, and this is just me being a bit contrarian, is the BMW 7 Series that was in Tomorrow Never Dies. You know, there's nothing -- I mean, another interesting thing when you talk about Bond films, is as we were discussing earlier on about is it happenstance? You know, do they design the cars to be in the films? It's become something. So over the years, so I would say from about '64 Goldfinger, all the things that we think of as setting the coordinates for Bond film, the locations, the women, the cars, the suits, maybe to an extent, the gadgets, obviously. Yeah, they all became critical parts of the mix from about '64. But nothing dates more quickly than technology, and I think if you watch Tomorrow Never Dies again, although the main story arc is about a megalomaniac media baron played by Jonathan Price which I think still holds true. A lot of the supporting stuff, you know, in the 7 Series that's driven by the Nokia phone. Remember Nokia, folks? Yeah. In fact, you know, the car, it's driven by remote control by the phone. And what's interesting is that BMW will sell you a 7 Series now in 2024, that you can park remotely in a multi-storey car park. I mean, I've never been brave enough to try it when I've had the cars on test, but it's an example of technology that seemed ridiculous 20 years ago, 25 years ago now actually coming true. So on the one hand, it looks dated.

Andrew Hammond: It was almost prescient.

Jason Barlow: Well, on the one hand, it looks a bit dated, you know, and the car certainly -- I mean, it's one of the areas of 7 Series that I personally read. I think it's an incredibly handsome car. But yeah. Sometimes the stuff that they -- the technology we see in the films, on the one hand it can seem dated, but on the other hand it is prescient. I mean, in fact, the DB5 in Goldfinger had a very, very early iteration of satellite navigation, GPS navigation, you know, which clearly when they were devising it for the car, they thought, well, this is an incredible piece of technology. And, you know, 25 years, 30 years later, it was fitted to most cars. Now, of course, there's standard GPS in a car nobody bothers with because you just plug your smartphone in and use whatever's on the phone. Well, I do anyway. I don't know about you, Andrew. Do you?

Andrew Hammond: Yeah. I do too.

Jason Barlow: Yeah. I mean, who uses the satellite on a car?

Andrew Hammond: One of the things that I find quite interesting as well is, you know, you mentioned that they're the BMWs. How did that BMW moment come about in the Bond franchise? Was that -- it was a business deal, BMW say, we'll give you X, Y, and Z, therefore they're in the Bond movies, or were there any politics surrounding that? Yeah. It's just it stands out a little bit in terms of the trajectory of the Bond movies, I think.

Jason Barlow: It does stand out. And not everybody's happy about it, but as I say I think it was a requirement really. These are expensive films to make and where possible they will embark on partnerships with people. And yeah. In the 1990s, I think GoldenEye was the first film and we see Bond in a BMW Z3. And I recall that people were a little disappointed, like what's 007 doing in a dainty little BMW convertible? You know, the cars got slightly more meaningful as the Brosnan series of films unfolded during the rest of the decade. But yeah, it's just pure financial pragmatism. I think, you know, they needed to do a deal with a car maker. And since the 1960s, they did. I mean, I think they did a deal with Ford in Diamonds are Forever. In fact, when I was researching the book, I found some fantastic correspondence between the chap who headed up that side of things for E.ON in London, and the guy at Ford who had agreed to supply the cars. And some of the correspondence got quite testy because unsurprisingly, some of the cars that were loaned to the production were not returned to Ford in the same shape in which they were delivered. And this guy wrote a letter going, I can't believe we've got these cars back and they're so badly damaged. You know, it's extraordinary whenever you think about what goes on now, you know, in movies. But it's how it was. And, you know, in similar films like The Italian Job where BMC who -- British Leyland, who manufactured the Minis. You know, Fiat were approached initially to supply cars and refused. BL weren't keen either, you know, and yet you think one of the most famous associations that you have with Mini is The Italian Job on those little cars doing crazy things in the city of Turin. But back then, you know, that kind of notions of product placement were in their infancy and people didn't realize -- certainly nobody, and indeed, you know, John Stears and Ken Adam and the guys at Aston Martin, if they thought that you and I were going to be sitting here 60 years later discussing the DB5 in that movie, you know, in the hallowed way that we are, and talking about this truly iconic car, they would never have believed it in a million years. But these are the -- this is what's happened, you know. And there are a handful of films, The Italian Job being one example, the DeLorean and Back to the Future, the Mustang that was in the Steve McQueen film Bullet, which is one of my all-time favorites. I've been in that car as well, actually. Didn't get to drive it, but got to passenger in it. Something strange happens in popular culture and where the world's collide, you know, and cars assume this sort of status far in excess of what they're actually doing in the movies. I find it fascinating as a process. Nobody can predict how these things are going to go. And it's wonderful when these things do happen. I think, I mean, you must agree. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: To place our conversation in deeper context, here's a brief crash course on the history of the Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, better known as BMW. These letters said together in this particular order, bring to mind dreamy curves, effortlessly sweeping around bends, or accelerating with ease in the fast lane of the freeway. They have become a by word for luxury cars and German manufacturing excellence. The company was founded in Munich, the capital of the Southern German state of Bavaria in 1917. In the early days, the company manufactured and maintained aircraft engines for the German Air Force. With the Versailles Treaty, which brought an end to World War I, restricting German aircraft production, the company moved to producing motorcycles and then motor vehicles in the '20s and '30s. The company was tented by its association with the Nazi regime when it went back into the aero engine business in a big way, including the engine that powered the iconic German fighter of World War II, the Messerschmitt 109. The company also utilized forced laborers and prisoners from concentration camps in their factories. Post-war BMW rebuilt and rebranded and focused on motorcycles and motor vehicles. Along with other brands like Mercedes, it became part of the German economic miracle or Wirtschaftswunder, which saw West Germany become an economic superpower in the Cold War period. In the present day, BMW is recognized as a global leader in the automotive industry with a brand that combines luxury performance and cutting edge technology. As a Bond car, it has come a long way since it provided engines to a regime that the fictional James Bond and the real life Ian Fleming, both of the Royal Navy fought against during the Second World War. [ Music ] I am wondering, is there any of these cars in the Bond movies that you drove that stand out for different reasons? So we spoke about your favorites, the Ferrari and the Lotus Esprit. Is there anything that was, wow, that was weird or, I never expected that, or this is very unusual to drive. I've never handled anything like this before. I'm just wondering if in that pantheon of Bond cars or like what other ones stick in your memory for other reasons than, you know, that's my favorite?

Jason Barlow: In terms of my personal experience driving, I mean, for Top Gear, I think in the run up to No Time to Die coming out, we did do a story where we gathered together a handful of Bond cars. One of them was an Aston Martin DBS, which was the film that appeared the -- I beg your pardon. One of them was an Aston Martin DBS, which was the car that appeared in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. And again, and it'll sound like I'm beating up a bit on Aston Martin, but it wasn't a car I wanted to drive particularly quickly. It just felt -- yeah, it felt a little ponderous. I enjoyed it, you know, but the place where we did the shoot was actually an old test track that's now become a world leading film studio. It's called Long Cross Studios, I think the most recent Indiana Jones film, a lot of it was shot there. A lot of the Marvel movies have been shot there. But it has a test track and there's a little bit -- it's called The Snake for obvious reasons, because it does twist and turn in a serpentine fashion through a forest. Actually, quite a lot of films have been shot in around there as well. There's a brilliant film called Children of Men with Clive Owen and Michael Kane, and there's a sequence where they're actually filming in The Snake. And I'm like, I remember watching it and saying to my wife that's Chobham. That's Chobham. I can't believe they're shooting that sequence in Chobham. And she's like, what are you talking about, you lunatic? Only I would really have spotted that. Anyway, I remember driving this Aston DBS through there and just thinking, yes, I don't want to go any faster than I'm currently going because it handled like a big boat, really. I mean, it was absolutely gorgeous. It was lovely. And a friend of mine called Simon Kidston who's one of the world's top classic car dealers, and he will kill me if I get this wrong, but I think he is now the owner of the DBS that was actually used in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It was a car that had ended up in Australia, and it had been owned by the same gentleman for about 40 years. And Simon had been in touch with this guy regularly going if ever you want to sell it, if you've had enough of it, you know where I am. And finally, the moment came. So now he owns that car and he will probably be -- if he happens to be listening to this, and he hears me criticizing the DBS for its slightly wallowy handling. I mean, that's how cars were in that period. I've already talked about the DB5. You know, they were cars of their time. You know, you don't get in a 55 or 60-year-old car and expect it to behave like one from 2024. That's a big part of their charm. I'm trying to think. I mean, I did the- one of the other cars I really love and probably the best car from the BMW area was the Z8 which is in the World is not Enough. Yes. The Z8 from the World is not Enough, that's a very cool car. I wish I'd bought one of those, Andrew. They were relatively affordable about 10 years ago. They've gone- prices have gone crazy. That's the one that gets chopped in half. I think what I would say, when I was researching the book, and I remember an early meeting and I was immensely fortunate. I had access to Eon's archives. You know, so the book is an official Eon book. The amount of information that's in there, the archive material that we have, you know, you can only get that if you have the full cooperation of Eon. And it was a great privilege. So I met a -- yes. At this point, I want to give a big shout out to Meg Simmons, who's the head archivist at Eon, who I spent three or four weeks. Basically, she gave me the keys to the archive, and we just went through everything and sourced all the -- it wasn't just images of cars, it was also coal sheets, you know, discarded documents. Like I say, the correspondence between Eon's, the main guy in London and the guy in America from Ford who supplied the cars, things like that. You know, to me, these were just priceless pieces of history. But at one of the early meetings with the freelance picture editor that was I was going to be working with, and she said, ''So how many cars are you talking about?'' And I said, ''Well, I reckon about 220.'' And her jaw genuinely did drop. She said, ''God, I thought you were going to be talking about 10 cars.'' And I went, no, no, no. We're going to try and cover, I mean, every car. So even in- I mean, I was pausing -- there are cars in the book that are only on screen for, I'd say in some cases, maybe one second, 1.3 seconds. And in some cases, they're the ones that fascinate me. They're not Bond cars really, but they're on screen. There's an Austin Allegro in Octopussy. And then a paradox --

Andrew Hammond: I think my uncle used to have one of them.

Jason Barlow: Yeah. Well, I'm so sorry to hear that. You know, the elect- yeah. The Allegro as it was known for its propensity for breaking down. So yeah. You know, people ask me what's my favorite. Also Octopussy, there's an Alpha Romeo called the GTV6. There's a terrific car chase. and it's not a car that's widely remembered, but, you know, I wanted to get into the slightly more obscure stuff. I didn't want to just talk about the Lotus Esprit or the DB5, you know, with all the gadgets, it's like, no. Let's get into the less celebrated of them.

Andrew Hammond: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I've spoke about most of the things that I was hoping to speak about, and I think that if any of our listeners are interested in those -- was it 225 cars? I think going into the book is the place to go.

Jason Barlow: Yeah. You know what, I was really nervous taking this project on because I thought, okay, there's two groups of people who I know are incredibly obsessive car fans and Bond fans. And here I am writing a book that's potentially going to trigger both groups of people. But you know what? You don't even need to read it. It's full of great archive imagery, coal sheets, all sorts of stuff.

Andrew Hammond: I'm looking here at the storyboard in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and it's really gorgeous. So it's a really like well-designed and beautiful to look through a book as well.

Jason Barlow: Well, thank you. Yeah. You know, we were able to reproduce that stuff, courtesy of Eon and quite a lot of it, there's been, you know, a lot of Bond books over the years. There's never been a book dedicated to Bond cars. So some of the imagery in the book has been previously published, but an awful lot of it had never been seen before. It was, you know, either very rarely published or never published. And yeah. You know, and as I say, although I love the shots of some of the cars, I mean, I'm just flicking through the book here, and there's a page here the chapter of the Man with the Golden Gun, and it's the company that was the film with the famous Astro Spiral jump over the canal and-

Andrew Hammond: AMC Hornet, was it?

Jason Barlow: That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there you go. And that AMC, that was a company that Eon went and they did a deal with, with AMC to supply the cars as well. And AMC even in that point in the 1970s was one of the smaller American car companies. It was still making a lot of cars, but they were -- you know, they were struggling a little bit. So, you know, to see those films, for me, it's as much a history capsule showcasing some of those cars. That's not the reason why anybody would watch the Man with the Golden Gun, but horror nerds would go, the AMC Hornet, that is not a car you see very often and very rarely talked about now, and probably almost exclusively in the context of being the car that did the incredible jump in the film. And anyway, this-

Andrew Hammond: And I actually did -- this jump, it was the first car, the first time this jump was ever done.

Jason Barlow: It's all documented in that chapter, in the book. Yeah. They managed to -- I think, one of the producers saw a weird kind of carnival company in America, used to, you know, move from city to city and do these incredible stunts. And he took one look at the -- I think they did the Astro Jump. That's going to work in a Bond film. This is amazing. So they were hired to do it, and the guy that actually did the jump was a guy called Lauren Bumps Willert. Yeah. And they did it in one take. And I think there was --

Andrew Hammond: One take. That's incredible

Jason Barlow: It's astonishing, isn't it? And there was discussion, well, should we just do another one? And everybody went, no. I think we got it. We're not going to tempt it. But yeah. I mean, that's one of the most famous sequences in Bond films. And getting to dig into that was extraordinary. There's a good story here that the studio at that time was United Artists, and their marketing boss was a guy called Highsmith. He invited members of the press to Thailand where they were shooting that. We took about100 press from Europe, and it rented 747 to Thailand. Despite the fact that they saw the car cork 360 degrees from one side of the river to the other, when the film came out, many of them said it was the most wonderful special effect they'd ever seen. You know, they actually watched it being done and still thought it wasn't for real. Quite extraordinary.

Andrew Hammond: It's pretty incredible.

Jason Barlow: That film is another film that gives the lie to your assertion earlier that most of the cars in the Bond films are European or American. Clearly big chunk of that film was shot in Thailand. So there's a lot of interesting '70s, Toyotas, Nissans. And so I say interesting, Andrew, really probably only interesting to me, to be quite honest with you. But, you know, that's what I mean when I was preparing the book, I wanted to give some love to those cars as well. And I must admit, I did watch that. I had to watch that film quite a bit. There was an awful lot of pausing of the DVD and going, what is that? I don't recognize that car. And then having to rail around and research. It's just --

Andrew Hammond: There's some research?

Jason Barlow: Yeah. But this is the thing. You know, books like this, they live or die on the amount of effort that the person who's writing and is prepared to put in on this kind of thing. And, you know, you try to overdeliver.

Andrew Hammond: Yeah. Well, I thought you'd done a fantastic job and, yeah, thanks everyone so much for your time. It's been a pleasure to speak to you, Jason.

Jason Barlow: It's been a pleasure talking to you as well. Thank you very much. [ Music ] [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: Thanks for listening to this episode of SpyCast. Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. If you go to our website at the cyberwire.com/podcast/spycast, you can find links to further resources, detailed episode notes, and fill transcripts. If you enjoy the show, please tell your friends and loved ones. Please also consider leaving us a five star review. Coming up next week on SpyCast.

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