22 Jan Bond In Motion exhibition

And now for something completely different. Following on from Curator Wayne’s museum visits last year, newsletter compiler Mike Monk reports on a visit to the Bond In Motion exhibition during a late-2016 UK holiday.

No less than 26 movies have been made of Ian Fleming’s secret agent character, all but two made by EON Productions, a company formed in 1961 by producers Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to purchase the filming rights to Fleming’s novels. Seven different characters have portrayed the MI6 agent, all of whom have been involved in dramatic car scenes of one form or another and EON displayed the largest collection of Bond cars ever seen in Britain.The venue was the London Film Museum, located just around the corner from the famous Covent Garden complex (which, incidentally, is the location for the London Transport Museum, which is also well worth a visit).

The cars of the latest Bond film, Spectre, are the feature exhibits, but there was a cross section of machinery used in many of the other movies. All of the exhibits were authentic, and at each display point there was a screen showing a clip from the relevant movie capturing the car in action. On view were:

Rolls-Royce Phantom III Goldfinger (1964)
Mercury Cougar XR7 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
Ford Mustang Mach Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
AMC Hornet The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)
Lotus Esprit S1 The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Citroën 2CV For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II A View To A Kill (1985)
Aston Martin V8 Vantage The Living Daylights (1987)
Aston Martin DB5 GoldenEye (1995)
BMW 750iL Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
BMW Z8 The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Aston Martin Vanquish Die Another Day (2002)
Jaguar XKR Die Another Day (2002)
Aston Martin DBS Casino Royale (2006)
Aston Martin DBS Quantum Of Solace (2008)
Aston Martin DB10 Spectre (2015)
Jaguar C-X75 Spectre (2015)
Rolls-Royce Wraith Spectre (2015)
Land Rover Defender Spectre (2015)

Apart from the cars, the display features over 100 individual original items including concept drawings, story boards, scripts, motorcycles, boats, submersibles, flying machines, props, models and miniatures. A really fascinating display. MM