Top 5 Tuesdays are back, and boy do we have a special line-up! This Tuesday’s Top 5 features the most popular and enviable cars driven by 007 himself. Everyone has a favourite Bond (and certainly a favourite Bond girl) but, we’re far more interested in the cars he’s been driving – so, for your eyes only, here’s our top 5 picks from Mr. Bond’s garage.
ASTON MARTIN DB5
It would be rude to do a top 5 of Bond’s cars without mentioning 007’s most iconic ride. Over the last 50 years, the steely-grey Aston Martin DB5 has gone through a series of stunts and huge explosions in its appearances in Goldfinger, Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale and Skyfall. Once dubbed ‘‘the most famous car in the world’’, this luxury grand tourer rockets to a monstrous top speed of 150 mph and launches from 0-60 mph in just 8 seconds, thanks to its all-aluminium 282 bhp 4L engine. In the films, Q Branch kitted out the DB5 with pop-out gun barrels behind the front indicators, revolving number plates and a tyre-slicing device. If you had this baby in real life, you’d definitely be licensed to kill!
SUNBEAM ALPINE SERIES 2
The classic 1961 Sunbeam Alpine was the first ever Bond car, and featured in a high-speed chase from Dr. No’s henchmen in Jamaica. This sporty two-seater open-top has an 80 bhp 1.6L engine achieving a conservative top speed of 99 mph and reaching 60 mph in 13.6 seconds – that’s slower than a hatchback! When it comes to the Alpine, it’s all about style. The light-blue coloured Sunbeam Alpine survived its very first car chase and the henchmen were sent careering off the cliffs, with Bond famously quipping that they were already “on their way to a funeral”, and so Bond lived to die another day instead.
LOTUS ESPIRIT S1
The Lotus Espirit S1 is most famous for its ability to convert into a submarine in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. With a steel backbone chassis and a fibreglass body, the light-weight Espirit has a herculean Lotus 907 4-cylinder engine that is straddled longitudinally behind the passengers. The engine delivers a robust 160 bhp pushing the submersible Lotus to a top speed of 138 mph. 60 mph is seen in just under 7 seconds, not bad stats at the time the Lotus was released. While we don’t (yet) have the technology available to automatically convert a sports car into a submarine as it takes to the water, never say never.
TOYOTA GT 2000
This 1967 Japanese sports car featured in Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice and is considered a vital part of the history of James Bond. This super-car has a meaty 130 bhp 2.0-litre inline-6 engine that pulls the GT from 0-60mph in 10 seconds, hitting a top speed of 135 mph. The convertible was actually modified to take into account Sean Connery’s height and was changed from a coupe into a roadster for the film. This GT 2000 is ultra-rare and worth millions as only two of these cars were ever built – diamonds are forever, but this car is certainly not!
BMW Z8
One of the more recent cars on our list, the BMW Z8 featured in The World Is Not Enough, with Pierce Brosnan in the role of Bond. This stunning aerodynamic roadster has an all-aluminium chassis with a 4.9-litre V8, capable of hitting 60 mph in just 4.2 seconds, reaching a limited top speed of 155 mph. In the film, Bond was seen in Azerbaijan using the Z8’s radar-guided stinger missiles, before the car woefully got sliced in half by a helicopter dangling a giant circular saw – we can’t expect Q to think of everything now, can we?
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