The Journey of James Bond's Automotive Icons
It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I dive into the fascinating history and significance of the vehicles featured in the James Bond franchise. Joining me are renowned authors Matthew Field and A.J. Chowdhury, whose latest book, Spy Octane Volume 1, explores the evolution of these iconic cars and their deep connection to both cinematic storytelling and automotive engineering.
During our discussion, we take a closer look at the extensive research behind the book, uncovering the stories of cars like the legendary Aston Martin DB5, alongside lesser-known models that have graced the screen. Matthew and A.J. share insights into the collaborative effort that went into this detailed exploration, highlighting the strong bond between Bond's characters and the cars they drive. They also discuss the wider cultural impact these vehicles have had on the James Bond legacy and how they've become integral to the franchise's enduring appeal..
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Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Yes, it's me, Mike Stone, and this is the Backseat Driver podcast.
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Speaker A: -: Speaker A:I'd like to introduce the Backseat Drive radio Show two gentlemen who, as the character Blofeld said, I expect you to die.
Speaker A:Well, I'm hoping that these two chaps dumped at least for the next 35 to 40 minutes because I'd like to introduce to the Backstick Drive radio show Matthew Field and A.J.
Speaker A:chowdhury, two James Bond fanatics and authors of Spy Octane Volume 1.
Speaker A:Which means there's more to come.
Speaker A:Gentlemen, welcome to the Backseat Driver A radio Show.
Speaker B:Thank you very much, Mark, and thanks for having us on.
Speaker B:A pleasure to be here.
Speaker A:How did the fanaticism for James Bond come about and how did you two guys get together?
Speaker B:Well, Asia, I think you, you start the journey on this one, don't you?
Speaker C:Just missed an important bit, Mark.
Speaker C:The.
Speaker C:The book is called Spy Octane, the Vehicles of James Bond, Volume 1.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So just to make that case.
Speaker C: published by porter Press in: Speaker C:It's an amazing book and Porter Press, an amazing motoring publisher, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners will know about.
Speaker C:And of course, Matthew is a very good writer, which is very annoying for me because he, you know, at least I could pretend I helped him do it.
Speaker C:But no, he wrote that on his own.
Speaker C:And then the publishers.
Speaker A:What you mean, what you mean, AJ is you can sit back and let Matthew do it.
Speaker C:Well, I kind of did that.
Speaker C:Talk about backseat drivers.
Speaker C: ero, published and updated in: Speaker C:The first sort of history of the Bond films which was properly researched and annotated in the age of the Internet.
Speaker C:There's so much myth out there.
Speaker C:So that was out.
Speaker C:That was how Matthew and I became official writing partner.
Speaker C:We'd been Bond fans and friends before then and then when Matthew was asked to follow up his award winning book, he came to me and said, should we have a go at this?
Speaker C:And I said, yeah, no, let's, let's see what we can do.
Speaker C:And Matthew, do you want to take up the story?
Speaker C:So it's beginning with Matthew coming off the RAC Club winning an award.
Speaker B:Well, do you know, that was a wonderful introduction, AJ And I won't tell everybody that you're also my agent, but no, I mean, that really was the story of it.
Speaker B:We wanted.
Speaker B:And you know, as AJ said, we've done this previous Bond book and it was about what could we do next?
Speaker B:And as, as you know, Mark, there have been several books that had been written on the James Bond cars before, some really good ones and some not so good ones.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:The absolute benchmark was a book that was written in the early 90s called the most Famous Car in the World by Dave Worrell, which charted the history of James Bond's Aston Martin DB5.
Speaker B:And that really was a groundbreaking book.
Speaker B:I mean, it kind of, it kind of put that car on the map.
Speaker B:I mean, the people had always thought it was a classic Bond car.
Speaker B:No one had ever written about it in any detail or followed how many cars there were or charted their history.
Speaker B:So we sort of started to look about wanting to do something like Dave did on all of the James Bond vehicles.
Speaker B:Not just the cars, but the planes, you know, the boats and everything.
Speaker B:Air, land and sea.
Speaker B:Yeah, and we started to sort of like break down.
Speaker B:This all happened over Covid.
Speaker B:We started to do a foot plan for the book and started to create this, this Excel spreadsheet of every single vehicle that moved in those 25 movies.
Speaker B:It suddenly became quite daunting because we suddenly.
Speaker B:We're not going to fit all of this into, well, just one.
Speaker A:Just if you don't mind me putting in.
Speaker A:I mean, one of the first ones, I remember, there's the Bentley driven by David Niven in the original Casino Royale, which personally I would think is an absolutely terrible film.
Speaker A:Then there was the Sunbeam Alpine.
Speaker A:I mean, there's been all sorts.
Speaker A:There's been the Astons, as you said, Lotus, Citroen, Peugeot, Mercedes Benz BMWs, the famous and the one truly do like the Toyota convertible to Toyota GT convertible, which is a special build.
Speaker A:I mean, the list of vehicles is endless.
Speaker A:I mean, there's even the little Honda off road trikes in Diamonds Are Forever.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker C:You know your stuff, Mark.
Speaker C:This is deep cuts.
Speaker B:But as you said, as you said, Mark, listing all of those vehicles, we couldn't get it all into one book.
Speaker B:And that's why we suddenly realized that we were going to need three.
Speaker B:So this first volume covers the first era of bondage, the Sean Connery films.
Speaker B:It's doctor Noted Diamonds Are Forever with George Lazenby's one turn in on Her Majesty Secret Service thrown in for good measure.
Speaker B:Should we cover really the 60s in this first volume?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:We also start, by the way, we must never forget the Bond films came from Bond books and Ian Fleming was a big petrol head and early adopter of luxurious travel.
Speaker C:So we start there.
Speaker C:And although Fleming was a big petrolhead, as we've discovered, he didn't really know much about cars.
Speaker C:So the books are littered with errors.
Speaker C:And that's an interesting opener to get people to remember.
Speaker C:These began with these wonderful books which we urge everyone to read first.
Speaker C:And then of course, Connery became the iconic Bond for a generation, what we call the golden era of Bond.
Speaker C:So this goes up to.
Speaker C: This goes from: Speaker C:And as Matthew said, it's more than just cars.
Speaker C:So we've got some wonderful original material on Helicopter, Little Nelly, we got access to the Ken Wallace family, who gave us unprecedented access to documentation and pictures.
Speaker C:We had our own photo shoots done.
Speaker C:This actually is an unofficial book, so we have relied a lot on brand new material, information, documents never seen before or never published before.
Speaker C:And we're really proud that we pushed the story forward.
Speaker C:Dave Worrell was very generous in allowing us to use his working papers to take on the.
Speaker C:The most famous car in the world.
Speaker C:And we've really pushed that story forward.
Speaker C:And Matthew, Matthew did a lot of the investigation here and at some point he was warned off various people.
Speaker C:We got involved with potential Mexican drug laws and shakes and was nearly fed to crocodiles.
Speaker C:Matthew might take up some of that story in his travels.
Speaker B:And he's not exaggerating either.
Speaker C:I heavily insured him.
Speaker C:I insured him very heavily before we went, but no, Matthew, do you want to take.
Speaker A:So as AJ said, there's.
Speaker A:There's a result here, whatever happens.
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:I Think, you know, we wanted to really, as I said, do a massive deep dive and follow up every possible lead that we could.
Speaker B: u know, it had disappeared in: Speaker B:I don't know if you've, if you've ever covered that, Mark, about the, about the bomb car that got to.
Speaker B:Stolen from his hangar in Boca Raton, Florida.
Speaker A:No, I mean, I have been to the Aston Martin Museum, was given a guided tour and sat in what is purported to be the original car.
Speaker A:But I mean, that's the other thing.
Speaker A:I mean, this will be found out.
Speaker A:How many of the original cars still exist and how many reproductions do you.
Speaker B:Mean of the Aston Martin or all of them in general?
Speaker A:Nearly all of them in general.
Speaker A:But it's like the Aston down at the Aston Museum.
Speaker A:I don't know if it's the original car.
Speaker A:It looks like it.
Speaker A:And of course they brought out the tributes to it.
Speaker A:But I have technically sat in the car.
Speaker B:Well, there actually were two cars used for the, for the filming of Goldfinger, his first appearance.
Speaker B: s, in: Speaker B:They thought in those days that, you know, that, that they couldn't see the value that the product placement was going to give them.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And there was plenty of people from film and TV bouncing up to them, asking them for free cars or wanting to borrow cars, and Aston Martin weren't interested.
Speaker B:And it was only when they, you know, really, you know, almost pleaded with them and showed them that the car was going to be a star in the movie that they kind of relented and they let them use the DB5 prototype.
Speaker B:Yeah, because obviously they needed to cut holes in the roof, they needed to drill holes in it all over the place to fit all of the, the gadgets, the machine guns and everything that was going to work on the car.
Speaker B:So that, that, that was the car that was used in the film.
Speaker B:And then they had a second car for, for the, for the long shots and the road scenes and the scenes in which Sean Connery was seen driving it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And both of those cars survived filming and they went on worldwide tours to promote the film.
Speaker B:And then afterwards they were returned back to Aston Martin.
Speaker B:They didn't belong to the James Bond producers, they belonged to Aston Martin.
Speaker B:And would you.
Speaker B:They sold them off.
Speaker B:They stripped them of the first one of the gadgets.
Speaker A:I was just going to vote in and say they actually returned the car back to normal specification.
Speaker A:Because the other thing was everything on the car had to work it out.
Speaker A:The Browning machine guns were.
Speaker A:Browning machine guns.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:So they stripped of the gadgets and they sold it to a businessman in Kent.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he, he had that car for a couple of years and suddenly realized that it was probably much more value to put the gadgets back on.
Speaker B:And he actually wrote to Aston Martin and said, you know, if I return it to the factory, would you put the guns back on it and everything else for me, please?
Speaker B:And they said, absolutely not.
Speaker B:You know, we sell.
Speaker B:We still have prestige cars, not movie props.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And he actually rather crudely had them reinstalled by a local engineer.
Speaker B:The car was then sold to America and it went through a couple of ownerships, sold at auction.
Speaker B: ught it from aston Martin for: Speaker B:60s.
Speaker B: a, and then it disappeared in: Speaker B:And the car has never been seen to this day.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:Now, there's been a lot of controversy around its disappearance.
Speaker B:I mean, pretty much every car magazine has tried to get an interview with the owner, Anthony Puglasi, who owns the car.
Speaker B:And, you know, quite rightly, he's.
Speaker B:He's denied those interviews because, you know, he's.
Speaker B:He's not necessarily always been been painted in, in a positive light by people thinking that, you know, you know, bad things had gone on.
Speaker B:But we really persuaded and persuaded and persuaded until he actually agreed to talk to us.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And talk about the details behind the disappearance of the car.
Speaker B:So in that, in that sense, it was great to get that.
Speaker B:That perspective.
Speaker B:And we've also spoken to an art recovery based in Venice, and his job is to recover things like stone and Picasso.
Speaker B:He's almost like a modern day Indiana Jones.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:He's currently working for the insurance company to try and find the car and he has got some incredible leads and believes that the car is still alive and well and somewhere in a cave in the Middle East.
Speaker A:Right, Mark.
Speaker C:Mark.
Speaker C:He raised an interesting point about sitting in the original Aston Martin.
Speaker C:And Matthew Field's Italian Job book also covers what Spy Octane does.
Speaker C:This is a book about cars and movie making and the illusion.
Speaker C:So how.
Speaker C:So each chapter is breaking out, how each sequence was filmed, what the cars were then, what happened to the cars.
Speaker C:That's unique Selling point of Sparktown.
Speaker C:We followed as much as we can the vehicle's history after filming and the myths and how they were underrated and not preserved.
Speaker C:You know, the idea that the iconic, the most famous car in the world was not viewed that way by the filmmakers or even the company.
Speaker C:And also how the cars were.
Speaker C:There's sometimes several different cars used for a sequence.
Speaker C:How special effects are used and how in the midst of time everyone thinks they've got the original.
Speaker C:And we point out later on it becomes difficult to track.
Speaker C:And the detective work on each vehicle.
Speaker C:The Toyota that you mentioned, which is your favorite, there's an interesting story there which we capture in Spy Octane.
Speaker C:I think Matthew got to the bottom of that again in another exclusive never covered before in any publication.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Because, I mean, you commented about various things and the filming.
Speaker A:It's a bit like to change films or change characters.
Speaker A:The Italian Job.
Speaker A:The Aston Martin that goes over the cliff actually wasn't, it was a Lancia.
Speaker A:There's no way they were going to destroy an Aston Martin film in that.
Speaker A:So shot from a decent angle, the Lancia looks like the Aston.
Speaker B:Well, they actually, I, I, I hate to tell you, Mark, the only reason they use that is because they destroyed the Aston Martin first and the cameras weren't rolling.
Speaker B:So they pulled the wreck.
Speaker B:They pulled the wreck back because it was to explode on going over the cliff.
Speaker B:And unfortunately the special effects went off too early.
Speaker B:So they had to find something that resembled an Aston Martin DB4 in Italy overnight.
Speaker B:And that's what they came up with.
Speaker C:That's the movies.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, I mean, carry on with the Aston Martin story.
Speaker A:I mean, it's, it might have been discovered, it might not.
Speaker A:I mean, is somebody going to try and get it out of its cave?
Speaker B:That I believe is, is.
Speaker B:It will be the next chapter of this story, Mark, that we yet to have an update on.
Speaker C:There is a huge reward for it as well.
Speaker C:The insurance company will pay out.
Speaker C:So everyone listening, get, get your maps and charts and your fedoras out.
Speaker B:Or even, or even maybe the individual in the cave in the Middle east is listening to us right now.
Speaker C:Well, well, we don't know exactly where it is.
Speaker C:You know, let's keep this legal.
Speaker C:But yes.
Speaker C:So Matt, you're going to talk about the Toyota.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:So Mark, you mentioned the Toyota would and that that was a really interesting choice of car for a Bond movie.
Speaker B: I mean, by: Speaker B:I mean, Bond was, you know, one of the, that, well, it was the biggest film franchise on the planet.
Speaker B:And so everybody at that point was really queuing up to get their cars into a Bond movie, rather years earlier, the producers pleading with them to borrow a car.
Speaker B: to get this new, this to the: Speaker B:But the producers said, look, we need a convertible, you know, and your car is only a hard top.
Speaker B:So they said, don't worry, we'll build you one.
Speaker B:And we interviewed a very, very interesting man in Japan who had been an engineer back at Toyota back in the 60s, and he talked and he was responsible for taking one of these cars and creating a convertible from it, or actually ended up doing two, and how they had to do it in record speed.
Speaker B:Now, those cars afterwards, again, they belonged to Toyota at the end of the film.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And what happened to them is they kind of got lost.
Speaker B:I mean, they did do publicity tours around the world, both in America and here in Europe.
Speaker B:And one car was discovered in the 70s, painted blue in Hawaii, and he had gone to a Toyota dealership in Hawaii and never got returned.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it was there for many, many years.
Speaker B: ged it back to Japan in about: Speaker B:And some of your listeners may have seen it now on display in the Toyota Museum in Japan.
Speaker B:But the real curiosity is what happened to the second car?
Speaker B:Nobody had any idea.
Speaker B:And we did a lot of digging and we actually found out that it was with a private collector in Japan, too.
Speaker B:And we eventually got to him and got to do an interview with him.
Speaker B: was only discovered in around: Speaker B:And it was just sat there on rackings, really.
Speaker B:Really in a bad way.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And he got it because he knew that some Americans were also after.
Speaker B:It was kind of a race to rescue this car.
Speaker B:And now it's been fully restored and both of them are now accounted.
Speaker B:Are now accounted for and are now back in pristine condition.
Speaker B:So it's wonderful.
Speaker B:It's a wonderful story there behind how both of those cars were rescued, now.
Speaker C:Lumped by octane in Spy Octane.
Speaker C:We detail that story with wonderful pictures as well.
Speaker C:We just got to say a little bit about the book.
Speaker C:It's a very handsome, huge tome, very heavy, by Porter Press.
Speaker C:Philip Porter's wonderful at doing these things, and we were expertly guided by a wonderful designer, Martin Port, and edited by Andrew Noakes, and it's a huge book.
Speaker C:So we've got these wonderful pictures, very sad actually to see the state of the Toyota and the Aston Martin and we chart their glory days then their days in recovery and being brought back to life with a lot of these vehicles happened after, which is throughout the book, I think is really interesting.
Speaker C:Another thing about the book, I know your listeners are big petrol heads, but this works for people who aren't interested in cars as well, you know, is it wonderful storytelling of the individuals?
Speaker C:What we've done is captured the voice of the various car owners and there's a lot of shared enthusiasm with people that I think Matthew had some great fun with.
Speaker C:The Cougar, the Mercury Cougar from Unmasked Secret Service.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, I mean that we know with three were used in the film and again we were able to, to confirm that all three cars survived to this day.
Speaker B:But all that had very different, very interesting lives.
Speaker B:The one that's actually very interesting is, is one.
Speaker B:There's actually a piece we've just done for classic and sports car to tie in with the book.
Speaker B: ged somewhere in around about: Speaker B:And it was just hard and it worked its way through the, the American car scene in London in the 80s and you know, changed hands every 18 months, two years for like 900 quid or something.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you know, we've got, we've, when we found all of those owners, we've got pictures of it on the drag strip at, you know, at Santa Pot.
Speaker B:We've got it, you know, tearing pictures of it tearing through the streets of the East End and Essex and eventually, yeah, the Essex races.
Speaker B:And eventually it was, it was rescued and restored over a 20 year period back to his glory date and then, you know, as we said, changing hands for 900 quid.
Speaker B: It eventually sold in: Speaker A:Because I mean that Cougar got quite beaten up in the film, didn't it?
Speaker B:Well, one of them did.
Speaker B:I mean, as we said, you know, the magic of movie making is you need to have one clean, pristine, you know, one for the stunts and a spare, you know, so you're never going to get away with more than one.
Speaker B:No, but the one that you're talking about, Mark, that got completely beaten up, we managed to locate that to Spain.
Speaker B:So that still exists too.
Speaker A:Oh, right.
Speaker A:Has that been restored?
Speaker A:Is it still, as it came off the ice rink.
Speaker B:As it came off the ice rink.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So, you know, it's, you know, the story about finding out what happened to these cars and these, you know, you know, everyday normal people that have nothing to do with films suddenly found themselves by accident owning a Bond car, which was just crazy.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, I mean, I get the feeling that a lot of people owned it and didn't realize what it was type of thing.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:But interestingly speaking to some of those, those guys from the American car scene in the 80s who were sort of like you know, 21, 22 at the time, they said we kind of knew it had sort of been in a Bond film, but nobody really cared.
Speaker B:Yeah, they said it didn't.
Speaker C:It just.
Speaker B:It was just an interesting little aside about the car.
Speaker B:We didn't.
Speaker B:We weren't sort of like thinking we better preserve this and put it in a museum because, you know, James Bond once sat in this.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, I mean, did you also cover, like the alpine out of the original Connery film?
Speaker A:Were you able to find that or did that just disappear?
Speaker B:Well, it's kind of disappeared, but we were able to push the story further because the, the story went that the production went out to Jamaica to make the film and they just borrowed the car from, you know, a local resident in, In Kingston, Jamaica.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that was the end of the story.
Speaker B:So the owner was a lady called Jennifer, Jennifer Jackson, who's long since passed away, sadly.
Speaker B:But we were able to track down her son and he had great stories that he shared with us about, you know, his mum's car being used by James Bond.
Speaker B:And as you remember in the film, he has a car chase where a hearse is like.
Speaker B:Is like ramming into him from, from behind.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Obviously they didn't do that with his mum's car, but it certainly was put through its paces when Sean Connery drove it.
Speaker B:And he said that one story that went around the family afterwards is, well, yep, it was fantastic that the car got immortalized up there on the big screen, but after Sean Connery finished with it, it never drove the same way again.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so that was.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker B:That was fascinating.
Speaker B:So, yeah, all of these cars, I've had interesting stories.
Speaker B:Do you remember the, the Bentley from.
Speaker B:From Russia with Lovemark?
Speaker B:The one, you know, Bond's first proper car?
Speaker B:Because really, that was a.
Speaker B:Almost a rental that he has in.
Speaker B:In Dr. No.
Speaker B:You know, we discovered that, you know, that that Bentley had a really interesting history to it and it was, it was Obviously built back in, back in the 30s.
Speaker B:So it was, you know, it was 25 years old or something before it even was used in from Rush With Love.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:But what was interesting is that it had actually been a demo car and we actually found pre war copies of Motor magazine where the James Bond Bentley had been road tested in there.
Speaker B:So he's got the same number plate and everything, able to reproduce those pages to show that, you know, it had this fantastic history before it ended up in the Bond film and then later on ended up belonging to Playboy.
Speaker B:And then we tracked it to the east coast of America and found its current owner who was sort of like, he was kind of aware that his car had been in a Bond film, but it was just a story, he didn't know too much about it.
Speaker B:He was fascinated to talk to us so that we could tell him about, you know, the association with Bond and From Russia With Love.
Speaker B:So each of these cars has got these fascinating stories that have just never been told before.
Speaker C:And here's another interesting book.
Speaker C:And most of your listeners will associate James Bond with Lotus and Aston Martin.
Speaker C:But of course, in the Ian Fleming books, he drove a Bentley and that was sort of a nod to what Fleming set down there.
Speaker C:And Fleming, of course, never drove a Bentley.
Speaker C:Drove.
Speaker C:Fleming actually drove American cars like Paul Thunderbirds and Avantes.
Speaker C:Imagine in the mid-50s, a big American car driving around London and Fleming sort of delighted in the attention he got from that.
Speaker C:But the Bentley is actually the original Ian Fleming James Bond Khan From Russia With Love, which lots of people cite as the best James Bond film.
Speaker C:That little guest cameo appearance is a nod to that history.
Speaker C:And then of course, everything changed with Goldfinger and the Aston Martin DB5 Asia.
Speaker B:I just have to quickly read that quote from Ian Fleming.
Speaker B:You talk about him driving through, through London in this American cars.
Speaker B:We've got this, this great quote that we found in an interview with Ian Fleming, Mark, where he says, if the tourists don't snap the Queen at about 10am on most mornings, they can at least get a picture of me and my Ford Thunderbird with Buckingham palace in the background.
Speaker A:I mean, the one thing a lot of people don't realize is as well that in the books Bond always used a small Beretta.
Speaker A:And the other product placement in the books was the fact that he always used a Dunhill cigarette lighter.
Speaker C:Sorry, that's slightly wrong.
Speaker C:He used a Ronson cigarette lighter and he used the Beretta and in the first five books until it was changed to Walther bbk.
Speaker C:Yeah, because the Beretta jams.
Speaker C:Sorry to.
Speaker C:Sorry to be.
Speaker C:Oh, I know.
Speaker A:I went on to the PPK.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:In Dr. No.
Speaker C:1 of the other things we must pay tribute to is we're associated with a US charity called the Ian Fleming foundation, which preserves the work and vehicles of the Bond things.
Speaker C:If you've seen Bond motoring exhibitions, Bond in motion in the UK and around the world, a lot of those vehicles are preserved and found by the Ian Fleming foundation.
Speaker C:And they gave us a lot of help, in particular Doug Rodinius, their curator.
Speaker C:And we relied on the expertise of lots of people in the motoring kit community, from Ariel to Mustang.
Speaker C:We have a couple of great Mustang guys that helped us.
Speaker C:The Mustang in Diamond Dial Forever.
Speaker C:So we really wanted the book to be technically accurate as much as possible.
Speaker C:Although there's lots of conflicting myth, crisscross crossing.
Speaker C:So sometimes where there was a sort of Rashomon like conflict.
Speaker C:We put both stories in to try and say, look, these people say this, these people say that.
Speaker C:Because a lot is lost in the mysteries of time.
Speaker C:The book is also annotated.
Speaker C:We store all the interviews and the material that we've done.
Speaker C:So we do sort of show our working out because again, Matthew and I stick this for accuracy.
Speaker C:Yeah, as far as possible.
Speaker A:I mean, just out of interest, apart from the Aston Martin, the other cars that we use, I mean, like the Bentley, how were these chosen?
Speaker A:Or did they just say we need a.
Speaker A:This type of car, go and find one on location?
Speaker B:Well, I think, I mean, I think, you know, that that situation you know, changed in each different scenario for each film.
Speaker B:I mean, I think for Goldfinger they were looking, you know, I mean, the first draft of the script had a Bentley in the script.
Speaker B:But then they talked about it and thought, well, you know, what's.
Speaker B:What's, you know, what's.
Speaker B: ports car that we can have in: Speaker B:And, you know, everything from.
Speaker B:From, you know, from the Jaguar was considered and it really was the Aston Martin that they felt was the car.
Speaker B:So that's the one that they went after when it came to you Only Live Twice in the Toyota.
Speaker B:You know, the Toyota is not Bond's car.
Speaker B:It's is Aki, who works for the Japanese secret service is her car.
Speaker B:So of course it needed to be a Japanese car because it fitted with.
Speaker B:With her character and where the story unfolded.
Speaker B: n the in night where that was: Speaker B:So you know, they went for the Aston Martin DBS Vantage which was the latest model of that time.
Speaker B:Then the next film, Diamonds Are Forever, Bonds involved in a big car chase in Las Vegas.
Speaker B:So they use the latest Mustang Mark 1 for that sequence.
Speaker B:So I think it's really what the script dictated and where the story was unfolding as to what car he, he was going to drive or any of the other characters we should say.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean the interesting thing in Diamonds Are Forever when he was playing pretending to be the diamond merchant, he drove a Triumph style.
Speaker C:Yes, yes, Good, good spot, very good.
Speaker C:So the, the key thing about this is it's also the filmmakers.
Speaker C:The Bond films were designed by a wonderful designer, Ken Adam, a German immigrant who was a petrol head.
Speaker C:Cubby Broccoli, one of the producers, was a petrol had a Ferrari.
Speaker C:So they loved cars as well.
Speaker C:And in fact Cubby Broccoli was friendly with Henry Ford Jr. Yeah.
Speaker C:And in the scripts they had a deal where it said the screenwriter would say of the latest, it would say the car would be a Ford of the latest variety.
Speaker C:So the early bum films from Go for and on onwards are populated by Ford.
Speaker C:It's the first time you see a Ford Mustang on screen.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker C:And throughout this the sort of subsidiary cars are whoever they have deals with and whoever is cognizant of that.
Speaker C:So for by the time a Diamonds Are Forever, which was to be shot in America and was going to actually be made in American studios, it was quite a.
Speaker C:They wanted to capture the American zine and that's why the Mustang become.
Speaker C:Well, it's a rental as well.
Speaker C:It's not ONS car per se, but we get that wonderful car chase in the parking lot as well where it.
Speaker A:Goes on to the famous two wheeled scene where it goes down the alleyway.
Speaker C:Yeah, the infamous two wheel scene because there's a terrible continuity error where it goes down.
Speaker C:It goes in the alleyway on two wheels and then comes out on the other two wheels.
Speaker C:Possible feat.
Speaker C:Not even James Bond could do.
Speaker B:We, we were just staying with Diamonds Are Forever, Mark.
Speaker B:I mean, do you remember the moon buggy in that, in that movie?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Well, that was just a one off prop with a, with an engine that was put into it and that was actually built by a custom car maker in Hollywood called Dean Jefferies who had built all sorts of interesting cars for films in America.
Speaker B:And as that film was based up there, they, they commissioned him to make the moon buggy.
Speaker B:And we had great help from his, his family who opened up all the files and they had a great collection of photographs of him building and designing the moon buggy that we were able to put in here.
Speaker B:And that, I think was one of the beautiful things about this book is because we were doing the deep dive is so many people opened up their attics and sellers and were discovering photographs that they didn't even realize they had or their relatives didn't realize they had because they've long since passed on.
Speaker B:And to be able to present this all here within the Bond framework was really the USP of what we've tried to achieve.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think we have achieved it.
Speaker C:I mean, a lot of.
Speaker C:Sorry, sorry.
Speaker C:A lot of the Bond vehicles also continue in existence as we cover the manufacturing, the toys, the merchandise, the moon buggy, the Aston Martin.
Speaker C:Not only was it the most famous car in the world, but it became the most popular screw in the world.
Speaker C:And we've got a nice section on how they live on in publicity and the promotion because that's a key thing.
Speaker C:A Bond vehicle becomes a kind of star of the film that gets promoted.
Speaker C:And one of the key people we spoke to was a guy who took the Aston Martin DB5 on a worldwide tour in the mid-60s.
Speaker C:And he was a fascinating character gentleman called Mike Ashley, who Matthew and I had the privilege to meet, although our livers didn't quite survive.
Speaker C:Matthew, do you want to describe our adventure in Miami?
Speaker B:Well, basically we, this, this, this, this gentleman had this amazing selection and scrapbook of his time taking this car around the world.
Speaker B:You know, newspaper cuttings, you know, everything from the car.
Speaker B:He got a parking ticket with the Bond car in, in New York and he kept it.
Speaker B:And we really wanted to, you know, showcase all this wonderful material in the book.
Speaker B:So we went out there to Miami to, to meet Mr. Ashley and Scan, you know, does.
Speaker C:Ashley.
Speaker C:Matthew Lord Ashley.
Speaker B:Lord Ashley, as we now call him.
Speaker B:And you know, he wasn't.
Speaker B:He was more interested in staying out in the nightclubs till 3am than scanning these pictures of the DB5 at 84 years old.
Speaker C:Wonderful character.
Speaker C:He was a real Fleming character.
Speaker C:He drank 70 cigarettes a day and drank and he was still standing.
Speaker C:And Matthew and I, relative youngsters, was of barely catching up.
Speaker C:And we actually, we took him out there, we took him out there with Dave Warl.
Speaker C:We united them together, which was lovely as well.
Speaker C:But yes, he was a fascinating character.
Speaker C:His voice comes through brilliantly in the book, you know.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:Now, as this interview draws to an end.
Speaker A:I mean, volume one, I mean how many more volumes are there?
Speaker B:This is going to run to, to three volumes.
Speaker B:And I think, think naturally the Bond films or organically the Bond films really break into three eras.
Speaker B:So this covers, as we said, the golden era, Bond up to the end of Sean Connery.
Speaker B:Book two is really the Roger Moore era.
Speaker B:So we start with Live and Let Die and we finish with Timothy Dalton's two films, Living Daylights and License to Kill.
Speaker B:And then book three will be the new films.
Speaker B:It will be the, the four films with Pierce Brosnan and the five films with Daniel Craig.
Speaker A:And how many cars have you still got to cover?
Speaker C:Quite a few, Mark.
Speaker C:Quite a few.
Speaker B:I don't want to go back to.
Speaker C:That spreadsheet spreadsheet just yet.
Speaker A:I mean, I, I, I.
Speaker A:Volumes two and three underway.
Speaker C:Yes, they're beginning.
Speaker C:They in fact we've done a lot of research anyway and there's a lot of material.
Speaker C:But yes, once you start you just can't stop.
Speaker C:It becomes an, it becomes a sort of quagmire.
Speaker C:But we've also got it.
Speaker C:We want volume one to get out.
Speaker C:So we are doing a lot of festivals and appearances, the Rec Club and Goodwood and various other Concords over the, over the year.
Speaker C:And Matthew and I will be happy to sign books.
Speaker C:It's only available from the Porter Press website at the moment.
Speaker C:So we, we need one to sort of get out there and do its job and hopefully volume two will, will match the wonderful stuff that's in volume one.
Speaker A:Gentlemen, I'd like to congratulate you for what you're doing.
Speaker A:It's like when we sat down at the beginning and started to rhyme off the cause you suddenly realize how just how many of them there are and what a monumental task you set yourselves.
Speaker A:But until volume two appears, volume three, when I hope you will come back and talk us through even more of the cars.
Speaker A:Matthew Field and AJ Chowdhury, thank you very, very much indeed for joining me on the Backseat Driver radio show.
Speaker D:Thank you.
Speaker C:Thank you Mark for having us.
Speaker C:It's been wonderful to be on the.
Speaker A:Back seat and it's been nice to spend of time a lot morning with Bond, James Bond, one of, one of my heroes.
Speaker A:And I've always watched them because of my own passion for the coins.
Speaker A:But once again gentlemen, thank you very much indeed.
Speaker B:Thank you.
