Top 10 James Bond Car Chases, A Hoon’s Guide to
In the 22 official and one unofficial (Never Say Never Again) 007 films, there are 60 car chase scenes. After cataloging, dissecting, and enjoying the chases, I came up with this list, which has a decidedly Hoon-centric tilt. Be sure to click on the video link at the end of each chase description. Enjoy!
10. A View to a Kill (1985): Roger Moore chases a parachuting Grace Jones in a carjacked Renault 11 taxi along the Seine.
Though the decapitating and de-ass-ing of the Renault are amusing, the highlight lies in the background. Every shot in the sequence is like an automotive time capsule. A Ford Escort cabrio here. A few Citroen CXs there. And even a Matra! Chase video link.
As an added bonus, here’s Duran Duran’s ridiculous video, with a cameo by a Hoontastic Citroen H van.
9. Goldeneye (1995): Soviet-era tank rampages through the streets of St. Pete, courtesy of Pierce Brosnan.
Casual 007 fans often rank this at the top, but sophisticated fans with refined palates find this chase a bit ham-fisted. Why not just bring in Bigfoot and watch it smash up cars on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday? But ultimately, watching all those Eastern Bloc vehicles smashed like Coke cans is cathartic, in the post-Cold War context. Chase video link.
8. You Only Live Twice (1967): That Toyota 2000GT!
The Toyota 2000GT convertible, which was made especially for the film, is arguably the most beautiful Japanese car ever. It could be sitting still in a drab parking lot and it would still make it on this Top 10 list. Chase video link.
7. The Living Daylights (1987): Timothy Dalton outruns the Czechoslovakian police and army in a tricked out Aston Martin V8 on asphalt, snow, and an ice-covered lake.
For a few Gen Xers born within a sliver of a time window, this charcoal grey Aston was, is, and will always be James Bond’s only true car. It is elegantly powerful. And with a coterie of gadgets and weapons, it outguns and outruns all– even the formidable Lada 1600. Chase video link.
6. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969): Tracy drives George Lazenby around an icy Swiss stock car race track.
An underrated (and often derided) Bond film contains an underrated, even ignored, car chase. Dozens of cars are expertly driven around a grip-less track. And which car dominates in that chaotic sea of Minis and Escorts? A big honkin’ Mercury Cougar convertible, of course. Chase video link.
5. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997): Brosnan drives his E38 7-series in a garage with an Ericsson phone.
This is a fantastic scene in an otherwise lackluster film. Brosnan spent ten days filming in this garage and it’s his facial expressions and body language that make this chase truly memorable and entertaining. The lesson we all learned from this scene– always get the buzzsaw-under-the-hood-badge option. Because ya never know. Chase video link.
4. Quantum of Solace (2008): Grey Aston Martin DBS against a small fleet of black Alfa Romeo 159s outside Siena.
What a way to start a movie! This chase personifies Daniel Craig’s take on Bond– dark, brooding, and muscular. Chase video link.
3. For Your Eyes Only (1981): Banana-yellow Citroen 2CV v. 2 black Pugs.
The anemic 2CV was fitted with a flat-four from a Citroen GS for this chase (this was two decades pre-Hayabusa). The technically complicated sequence was competently supported by slapstick moments, disco music, and Carole Bouquet’s preternaturally straight and radiant hair. Chase video link.
2. Never Say Never Again (1983): Dat red R5 Turbo!
It was painful to watch the geriatric (then 53 year old) Sean Connery struggling on that motorbike. But the diabolically sexy Fatima Blush behind the wheel of the even sexier mid-engined Renault sealed the deal for every card-carrying Hoon. Chase video link.
1. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): Roger Moore’s Mark I Lotus Esprit evades his enemies by transforming into a submarine.
This is the prototypical car chase scene, cubed. One, you’ve got a new-to-the-world Lotus Esprit supercar. Two, you are chased by a motorcycle, a sinister sedan, and a helicopter. Three, you have the beautiful Mrs. Ringo Starr (Barbara Bach) riding shotgun. And finally, the Sardinian coastline is the backdrop. What’s not to love? Chase video link.
Well? Do you agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
And yes, you’ve just spent 44 minutes and 39 seconds of your life watching car chases. You’re welcome.
[Images source: Internet Movie Cars Database]
No related posts.
My favorite is the DB5 vs. '57 Skyliner chase in Thunderball, despite the fact that it resulted in the loss of a Skyliner.
[youtube 9e-WdbckO70 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e-WdbckO70 youtube]
It died for a worthy cause.
<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-33U3yASu4ao/Td14wX2d9sI/AAAAAAAAAs4/990al67u7jk/s640/m1gz17nshjbv_ml.jpg">
"Never say Never" really had the weirdest collection of cars in that chase, because I seem to recall that the two other cars were a disco-Camaro and a Peugeot 505.
Also, did the Czech cops really drive 1500 SL's? That's like the top spec "Lada GT", seems awfully extravagant.
That would be a Peugeot 604
<img src="http://imcdb.org/i002467.jpg">
The end of each description has a link to the chase video, so you can check for yourself!
I love you, man. It's been a long week for me, and at 5:30 I decided to kick back and enjoy a bit o Hooning, and what to my wondering eye did I behold other than some of the most excellent Bond Car Chases in the universe.
Ahh, the world is a better place now that the Hooniverse is a part of it.
God Bless us, Each and Every One!! Most particularly the ones that continue to post excellent content accompanied by witty repartee here on my new favorite website, the Hooniverse.
These classic Bond clips will bring me much joy in the days to come.
I plan to watch them several times before New Years Day.
Wow! Your post alone made all the hours of research and writing this piece worth it.
No DB4? While I admire your choices and reasoning, you know nothing. My favorite Bond chase is where he plays tag with a girl all the way down a mountain, and then rear ends her car, just so he has the chance to chat her up and get some deets.
Well, of course no DB4, Bond drives a DB5.
/pedantic
Always ID'd as a DB4. The 5 looks remarkably better. Screw the number. Give me the smoke machine, oil slick, wheel cutters and ejection seat and I'll be cool.
And this is an extraordinary public service that your have performed. More like this, plz!
technically she has a flat as she tries to pass him (a spike coming out of his rim might have had something to do with that) and the movie was Goldfinger
"Do you expect me to talk Goldfinger?"
"No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
Never say never was a rather crappy Bond-Movie…
But Fatima Blush and her little red R5 Turbo will allways make it my favourite!!
<img src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.102771.1313918239!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg">
<img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4086/5041013591_121a866ff8.jpg">
Fate Bush? Now that's truth in advertising. Oooh babe, I'm on fire.
What about the License to Kill tanker chase? If only for the balls to the wall insanity of putting the truck up on only half its wheels.
[youtube SX5veWgLpok http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX5veWgLpok youtube]
That will be in the "Bottom 10 James Bond Car Chases"
Really… that was horrible… frame with hinges.
Oh fine it loses the plot a bit at that point, but I still like it.
Negative. Maserati Biturbo? Stinger Missiles? Carey Lowell? Works for me!
I'm guessing Jim Yu is under 35 to go so heavily for the Dalton, Brosnan, and later Moore movies. Really, Dalton?
I'm with Jim! My preference runs thus: Dalton, Craig, Moore, Connery, Lazenby. The least said about Brosnan the better.
Living Daylights wins for me; V8 Vantage, Audi 200, Ladas, Hercules, Harrier. Excellent supporting cast.
Not sure about the order of the guys in the middle, but first and last are spot-on.
Living Daylights is one of the better ones, as well as Live and Let Die with all the malaise-era land yachts.
You put the jokey, cutesy Roger Moore ahead of Connery? Especially early Connery? Turn in your Bond-fan card now.
When I was young I thought I loved Moore's Bond, because For Your Eyes Only was the first one I had seen and it's fantastic.
Then, I watched all of the movies in order, and I realized that I actually just liked For Your Eyes Only. Turns out memories of that one overrode the rest.
And I don't care if he drives a Ranchero, fuck Odd Job.
And what about that wild ride down the FDR Drive after the driver gets it in the neck, huh?
And what about all the ski and snowmobile sequences, huh?
That scene with Oddjob and the Ranchero was amusing because the little Ford took a 5,000-plus pound cube of crushed, dropped Lincoln Continental with just a little bounce. In reality, the poor Ranchero would probably have been bent double.
<img src="http://www.imcdb.org/i018897.jpg" width="500/">
That reminds me that John Chamberlain died today. I'll post a bit up in the Last Call.
Must have been an experimental, Brit-sourced hydroeleastic suspension. Very Q.
That screen cap from OHMSS looks like it was shot with Matchbox cars. Very surreal.
Nothing involving a DB5 nominated? The only one starring a convincingly youthful Sean Connery has him in a Toyota?! Blasphemy! Santa is taking notes, Jim.
I knew I'd get crap for omitting the DB5. It's without a doubt the coolest of the Bond cars. But the chases have been sub-par. I think a lot of it just has to do with the fact that car chase science was still in its infancy in the early movies.
You obviously haven't seen any Keystone Kops (or other Mack Sennett) movies from the Silent Era of the early 20th century if you think car chase science was in its infancy in the 1960s.
Rewatching the Quantum of Solace chase, I'm reminded of why I'll always regard that movie as probably better than it actually is. Whatever flaws it might have, that chase is absolutely fantastic.
Good thing that the copper-colored '59 Chevy narrowly averts being pasted in the You Only Live Twice chase — because we know now what a disaster that would have been. And what happened to the droptop 2000GT?
Good one Jim; with so many to choose from, you have chosen well.
As a diecast collector, I was hoping you included the chase from You Only Live Twice, with the Toyota 2000GT. Call me perverted, but I even have a diecast model of the Black Toyota Crown, complete with henchmen.
See number 8 above.
I was just cleaning out the garage and found a Johnny Lightning diorama of a speedboat jumping over Sheriff Pepper's police car from Live and Let Die!
WHAAAAAAT! No Mustang Mach1? You will have to be flogged to death by a Ms Tiffany Case.[youtube Iuh2L-_yf3M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuh2L-_yf3M youtube]
I came here to make the same gripe. Gadgets are cool and all but a skiied Mustang is just bad ass.
<img src="http://www.archivo007.com/Images/ford-mustang%20mach1.jpg" width="500">
The race back to the airbase in Octopussy. Obviously.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KXBjps0igDU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Because GTV-6, suckers.
Yup. That was number 11 on the list.
Wow, you really put some effort into this, must've taken a while. I almost completely agree with the list, although I would've traded number 9 with the chase including the corkscrew jump from The Man with the Golden Gun. I dislike Brosnan, but I like the E38 even more, so nr 5 is acceptable. I'm pretty sure my E38 had all those gadgets, but the Ericsson phone controlling them had been displaced at some point, so I never got to try them.
I really got a kick out of seeing the baddies beat all these ordinary cars I'm fond of, like the Ford Scorpio and Opel Senator in nr 5, the Peugeot 604 and Camaro in nr 2 (one chase I had forgotten about completely, need to rewatch the entire movie) and of course the Ford Taunus in nr 1.
Great job Jim!
While not a chase scene per se, I liked the back story of the flip scene in Daniel Craig's Casino Royale (as opposed to the David Niven one from 1967). IIRC the stunt team used a BMW as their test car and had no trouble getting it to flip using a small ramp. When they used the Aston it wouldn't flip on the small ramp so they got a larger one and tried it with the same results: no flip. They finally mounted an air cannon behind the driver's seat that fired a cylinder into the ground at the appropriate moment. It worked so well the car rolled 7 times and they did it in one take.