Paul Newman and Steve McQueen have plenty of inspiring car movie scenes. But neither has anything on the actors who played James Bond the cars the characters drove — Aston Martin to the Lotus Turbo Espirit.
In one website description, the TurboEsprit is described:
“As it took every single teenage and pre-pubescent boy’s inspiration and gave it a good shake. It spawned school-ground talk, made young men believe underwater driving was possible and let a new generation discover just how good the Bond films were.”
But it was Sean Connery, the original James Bond in film, who started the coolness — weaponry, inventions, smoothness with women — and he drove a 1964 Aston Martin D85
One auto web site wrote of the Aston Martin:
“The DB5 just exuded cool. It took Aston Martin into a whole new era of ice cold GT cars made for tuxedo-wearing, cigar-smoking, womanizing rich 30-somethings who knew what they wanted and how to get it.”
The automotive site AutoBlog.com has an extensive piece in the history of James Bond cars. Visit: James Bond Cars.
Article Last Updated: August 30, 2011.
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A sports, travel and business journalist for more than 45 years, James has written the new car review column The Weekly Driver since 2004.
In addition to founding this site in 2004, James writes a Sunday automotive column for The San Jose Mercury and East Bay Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., and monthly auto review and wellness columns for Gulfshore Business, a magazine in Southwest Florida.
An author and contributor to many newspapers, magazines and online publications, co-hosted The Weekly Driver Podcast from 2017 to 2024.
