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2020 Ford GT
Only 250 will be build this year. :)>-
Is that the Lola car? I didn’t know it was in the Avengers.
Yep, I'm in on that one too. Classy looking vehicle.
& fast. Very fast. :D
This is from the IMCDB:
"The Avengers car was not the Ford Press car GT40 P/1008. It was GT40 P/1038, one of the car run by Essex Wire at Le Mans in 1966 with race number 59 (...) The scene was filmed in October 1966, and the episode was first broadcast in February 1967. This information thanks to a book on the Avengers from a good few years back."
This bruiser has a spring in its step -- The Clarkson Review: Bentley Flying Spur
By Jeremy Clarkson (Sunday Times, March 15)
It's been argued since the dawn of automotive time that if a car manufacturer wins at the track on a Sunday afternoon, its sales will increase in the showrooms on Monday morning. Fair enough. So who won the 12-hour Bathurst race in Australia recently? You don't know, do you? I tried the other day to work out how many types of motor sport there are around the world, and it's just about impossible. Certainly there are thousands, and each one comes with its own set of rules and regulations. No one could possibly be expected to follow all of them. Most of us, in fact, follow just one: Formula One. Which, I guess, is why we all drive to work every day in our Red Bulls.
Occasionally a new "thing" roars into our consciousness, such as the British touring car championship in the 1990s. That was tremendous. And these days an increasing number of people who want to watch milk floats whizzing about in city centre car parks are drawn to Formula E. My favourite, though, has always been the Bathurst 1000. I first saw it on television about 500 years ago and couldn't believe my eyes. The cars, big Fords and Holdens, had cameras that could be remotely swivelled to ensure they captured the action. And the commentators could talk to the drivers. And we could listen in.
This annual event was absolutely huge in Australia, where the Ford and Holden rivalry was deep. It was Manchester United v. Liverpool but on an epic scale. Big, nasty fights would break out every year, so in an effort to cut down the violence, organisers restricted alcohol. Which meant fans went to the site weeks or even months in advance and buried their beer so it could be dug up and consumed before the fight on race day.
In 1992 the entire crowd was, for once, united in sorrow and grief, because, to everyone's horror, a Japanese Nissan Skyline won. "Boo," they shouted at the winning driver, Jim Richards, as he took to the podium. After they had pelted him with beer cans, he snatched the microphone and called them "a pack of arseholes". It was all very Western Suburbs. I loved it.
Today the Ford v Holden battle is over, chiefly because Holden has gone to that great scrapyard in the sky. But the racing has survived, and earlier this year Bathurst staged around of the Intercontinental GT Challenge — a branch of motor sport that allows supercar manufacturers to go wheel to wheel and see which is best. It should be bigger than the Premier League and the NFL combined. But the average attendance is about one. You get bigger crowds at a county cricket match. And the coverage in terms of column inches is even smaller. Which is why you don't know who won that 12-hour race in Oz.
It was a Bentley Continental. In a race interrupted by the arrival on track of two kangaroos, the big Brit bruiser somehow put one over on the much more lithesome supercars from McLaren, Porsche, Lamborghini,Aston Martin and Audi. Yes, I know this racing version had two-wheel drive and weighed only 1.3 tons, but even so.
Watching something that big do that well was quite a spectacle.
I haven't driven a Continental recently, but I have been driving its four-door brother, the new Flying Spur. And even though this emphatically does not weigh 1.3 tons and most definitely does have cumbersome four-wheel drive, it still absolutely flies. You put your foot down and, when you glance in the rear-view mirror and see all that quilted leather and all that trinketry, you can't help thinking: "How is this even possible?" In the previous version the gearbox could be a bit dimwitted, but not any more. And there are other improvements. There are cupholders in the front. There's even more Volkswagen tech. The ride, even on big 21in wheels, is massively improved. And it is a much more joyous car both to sit in and behold. You can even have an illuminated flying B emblem that rises silently from the leading edge of the bonnet — who doesn't want that in their lives?
Mistakes? Well, let's start with the dashboard trim. So many types of wood are on the options list, you need to be a qualified arborist to decide which would be best. Oregon crab apple, Manchurian walnut with a splash of Siberian stone pine or good old-fashioned Cretan zelkova? Bentley sent my test car with a glossy piano-black finish, and it looked lovely until the sun came out. Then the reflection was so powerful, it was like being shot in the face with a ray gun.
There were other issues. All companies these days are engaged in a headlong rush to reinvent the gear-lever. Slotting it into D and setting off is deemed to be old-fashioned, so you must jiggle it this way and that or engage D twice before you can go. And the Bentley's no different. I got cross with it often.
What's more, around the base of the gear lever there are several thousand very small buttons. To see which does what, you must put on your reading glasses and lean over for a good peer. This could be construed as "driving without due care and attention". Plus, you need to be mindful, because they, too, are all set in a glossy piano-black veneer, so if you've got up close and personal when the sun comes out, it's like being shot in the face by several thousand ray guns.
My main issue, however, is the mountainous torque. That gigantic turbocharged W12 engine produces so much of it that your passengers will get an idea of what it would have been like to ride a Saturn rocket. If you have a driver, he'll need ballerina feet and the touch of a gigolo to be smooth.
I don't care, though. This is a fabulous car. Yes, there are small mistakes, but that's what gives it a human quality. Who chooses their friends because they're reliable and sensible? In the Spur you get astonishing smoothness and silence coupled with insane power. When I pressed the brakes, I always thought, "How are they stopping it? How?!" Most of all, though, you get a sense of deep satisfaction every time you get inside. Yes, it's a bit chintzy and a bit Wilmslow here and there. But in a world where everyone else makes car interiors look like the inside of a man's washbag, it's refreshing to have a bit of diamond-gnarled brightwork and some chrome organ-stop vent knobs.
After driving the previous Spur, I concluded by saying the Rolls-Royce Ghost was a better car. But that is not the case any more. The new model is just so sensational.
Plus, it's very affordable, if you are a successful chief executive or a pop star with several No 1 hits in your past. I suppose I'd call it affordable too, but as I'm from Yorkshire, I'd wait until the summer, when the V8 version is set to come along. Not only will this be about £20,000 less expensive, but you won't have to tell your passengers to hang on every time you pull away from the lights.
This means they won't know it's a racing car. No one knows, but trust me on this. It is.
And I like cars that are fast but you don't "see" it. Like the Jaguar XFR I posted earlier. Or the Subaru Forester XT.
I wonder if Coronavirus will spell the end for Aston Martin?
https://www.pitpass.com/66751/Stroll-to-increase-stake-in-Aston-Martin
AM will build 25 DB5 "Goldfinger" cars. I've ordered mine already. ;)
£2,75 mil each.
Yes, as that link says, they announced that over a year and a half ago :D
But I guess they have now released a photo of one (even though there was a prototype at that event last month at Silverstone where journalists drove all of the NTTD cars which got throughly photographed).
They forgot the wing mirrors. I want my £2m back!
If anyone's interested, please send me a DM. ;)
A recent model? :-?
This is one of my favorite Ferraris: the 412.