There are priceless iconic James Bond vehicles – the Toyota 2000GTs and Aston Martin DB5s of this world – and then there are Leyland Sherpas and Citroën 2CVs.
Yes, some Bond cars you can actually afford – models whose names you can drop into dinner party conversation as genuine, 24-carat Goldfinger motors that Jimmy Bond drove.
We have the light comedy years of Roger Moore to thank for some of the best alternative Bond-mobiles, so let’s see what affordable oddities are out there. Their only qualification is that Her Majesty’s Secret Servant must at least have sat in the front.
Bond’s First
Dr No (1962) was the first Bond film, in which you can see Sean Connery rocking around the Caribbean in a pretty but effeminate Sunbeam Alpine. Still, at least it could outrun a hearse. Bond had a Mk2, but it doesn’t matter; at least it wasn’t an MG B, the car he drove in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). Rusty barn-find Alpines are a few grand, but a tidy mid-1960s example is £8000-£10,000.
Yank Tanks
The early ’70s saw a series of US audience-pleasing appearances by muscle-bound American motors. Such cars are cheaper Stateside, of course, but the Diamonds Are Forever (1971) Ford Mustang Mach 1 you can buy there for £13,000-£14,000 will be worth at least £5000 more over here.
Bond Goes French…
…but only for our amusement. After Roger Moore’s Lotus Esprit expired, he went for a Citroën 2CV in For Your Eyes Only (1981). The great news is that you can buy one that has been written off for around £3000. That will get an early to mid-1980s Dolly. Bamboo editions are up to £4000. Resist paying £7000 for a recent early 1970s import.
Finding a Renault 11 taxi like the one that appeared in A View to a Kill (1985), and which was quickly decapitated, is more problematic. Fortunately, you can still track down a 1.4 GTL for a few hundred.
Italian Job
Baddies in Alfa Romeos (159 and 156) were a feature of Quantum of Solace (2008). Earlier, in Octopussy (1983), an Alfa GTV6 was clearly the car to steal when Bond absolutely had to get to a circus, dress up as a clown and diffuse a nuclear device. Only Roger Moore could carry it off. Prices for GTVs have gone a bit classic car nuts and are five figures, which is okay if the rust has been banished. However, there are the odd ones for £5995 from the 1980s that are worth snapping up.
Bond goes Shed 7
There was the BMW Z3 in GoldenEye (1995) – heavy with gadgets in Q’s lab but good enough only for a short commute to a bush airfield. You can drive like Pierce Brosnan for a grand, enough to get you a 1998 1.9 Z3 – rather cheaper than the six-figure Z8 that was cut in half in The World Is Not Enough (1999).
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