Background to Bond (The Motor, August 21, 1963)
Special Investigator D.B. Tubbs Grills 007’s Creator Ian Fleming
You can’t read a book about Secret Service agent 007 James Bond without being aware that he is fond of fast cars, which is not surprising because Ian Fleming likes them, too. He has been devoted to motorcars all his life, from the first car he owned, an old khaki-coloured Standard with the Union Jack radiator badge, down to his present Studebaker Avanti. The Bond-Fleming firm have an especial affection for Bentleys, which they are apt to make up as they go along, like the “Mark II Continental that some rich idiot had married to a telegraph pole” in Thunderball. You may remember that Bond got Mulliners to rebuild it as a two-seater and “fitted new clockwork—the Mark IV engine with 9.2 compression”. Strictly non-catalogue, but not as fictional as The Saint’s Hirondelle.
This Bentley thing of Fleming’s goes back at least to Le Mans 1930. As a young man he covered that race for Reuters, getting to know the Bentley teams quite well—not the drivers so much as the mechanics in the pits. The great tear-up between the green cars and the Mercedes made a great impression on him, so that the theme continually recurs in the Bond books, where, out of reminiscent piety, superchargers are apt to howl when strictly they shouldn’t. A year or so later Fleming covered the Alpine for Reuters, this time from the best place of all, for he went as passenger with Donald Healey in the 4 1/2 Invicta that won its class. So the firm has respectable Vintage roots, and an orthodox preference for Bentleys of the old style—a feeling reinforced by Fleming’s life-long friendship with Amherst Villiers, who developed the Blower cars for Birkin, and is now in charge of the Moon Project at the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Letters pass to and fro on Bentley lore, not untinged perhaps with hindsight and wishful thinking. Other motoring matters are vetted by a London friend who undoubtedly knows his stuff, but is apt to get coshed by the plot. Hence errors like the “new set of racing Michelins” and the loud hiss of vacuum brakes.
Fleming, like Bond, likes large cars. He is not attracted to the smoothery of an S2 or E-type, but he wants something that will carry him far and fast across the Continent with lots of luggage. The car must stand out in all weathers because there is no garage, it must start at once, and give no trouble. The first two-sealer Thunderbird. which Fleming met in the States, filled the bill. It was, he says, a splendid touring car. The paint and chromium bred for American climatic extremes never tarnished, and the car did not so much as blow a lamp bulb in six years; by no means a sports car extra sec like a Ferrari—but not soft and suburbanized like the later four-seaters.
The Avanti, one might say, came by post. Pinched in New York State for doing 97 m.p.h. in a 50 limit, Fleming put the cause of his conviction, a Studebaker Special with Cadillac engine, into a novel. In this book, Diamonds are Forever, Felix Leiter explains the “Studillac” to Bond, adding that “You couldn’t have anything better than this body. Designed by that Frenchman, Raymond Loewy. Best designer in the world. But it’s a bit too advanced for the American market…” So one day Fleming had a letter from Loewy, saying thank you for the few kind words and asking whether he had tried an Avanti. He hadn’t, but he had a trial run and wrote to Amherst Villiers. Villiers said go ahead, so he ordered one.
The Avanti, says Fleming, is “a bomb of a motorcar. European roadholding and disc brakes. It has cut my drive from London to Sandwich by 20 minutes, just on those brakes. And the tremendous rattle of the exhaust note as that big supercharged V-8 engine goes through maximum torque makes you feel young again. In fact, the torque is so tremendous you have to be careful not to bum the rubber off your tyres. At around 5,000 dollars the Avanti is very cheap in the States, and at £2,810 it is not dear here. Little things about it are silly: the cheap little door handles come off, and the rear vision is farcical. Tiny rear mirror. I’ve fitted a bigger one.”
The Kentish roast was infested with villains until James Bond cleaned it up. Drax’s murdering Mercedes and Goldfinger’s solid gold Rolls have gone, and the dreadful Korean is dead; but on A2 and A20 you still see his “repainted sky-blue Ford Popular with large yellow ears scurrying along the crown of the road,” and tirelessly meet “that infallible badge of the bad driver, a hat clamped firmly on the centre of his head.”
Ian Fleming profits by observation. He knows about bowler hats. He knows that sooner or later if there are two women in a car they will look into each other’s eyes, and if there are four women the front two will turn right round. He has learned to mistrust dollies, tigers, steering-wheel cosies and string-back gloves. He suspects that packets of tissue on the rear shelf are a car-snob affectation hailing from the U.S.A., and though an ardent Scot he is maddened by Ecosse plates. He is now against badges of every kind. “I used to have quite a collection of foreign ones, pleasant reminders of trips abroad, but the whole thing got out of hand. Besides they don’t go on a modem car. Any badge would spoil the lines of the Avanti, so I’ve taken them all down.” It was quite a proud moment, he says, when he passed his advanced driver’s test, “but would you believe it, people have started putting their I.A.M. badge on the back. So I’ve taken that down, too.”
The expertise in the Bond books, though sometimes shaky in detail, is mostly first hand, and the motoring bits have a solid background, despite the surface cracks. Ian Fleming knows about underwater swimming because he dived with Cousteau in the Mediterranean galley days, he has the rifle-shooting patter because he used to shoot for Sandhurst. He was never in the Secret Service but he was in Naval Intelligence during the war “and such friends as I still have in Intelligence forgive what James Bond does because they say I’m their best recruiting agent.” Each bit of expertise brings the story back to earth. “The Bond books are sheer fantasy, but when you read that Bond wears a Rolex Oyster or Saxone golf shoes, you believe in him more as a person.” And when he borrows a DB3 you envy him as well.
Before we parted I wondered whether Mr. Bond, always a keen courting type, ever went courting in cars. “Perhaps,” said Ian Fleming, “but I doubt it. Bond likes always to keep both hands on the wheel.”
Note: this image and the previous one are from a separate publication, Sporting Motorist (April, 1963).
I wish to thank the fellow researcher and collector who kindly sent me this article. Watch for another next week!