GQ^ CARSThe Aston Martin DB5 has defied the
odds to become not just the Bond car, but
also the most famous car in the worldNo Time To Die’s DB5s
might look like the
original, but they use
a bespoke chassis and
are powered by a
modern 360bhp enginePhotographsAlamy; Tram Kolluri- MGM; Shutterstock; UPI Media
rally champion Mark Higgins. This is a
guy who can make a car dance. But, as
Morrison tells me, the skill set a stunt
driver needs to possess goes way beyond
being able to drift a car.
“You have to be extremely precise, to
understand what the camera is doing
and understand what you’re trying to
get across,” he explains. “These guys
have got four seconds to tell a story
that’s happening throughout the whole
film. So they’ve got to attack that certain
shot as if it’s the last thing they’re ever
going to do. No one arrives with that
ability fully formed. Mark has learnt all
that and he’s up there now with the best
film stunt drivers in the world.”
Higgins has worked on Bond since
2008’s Quantum Of Solace, during which
he recalls arriving on set as a newbie to
see a crew member wielding a sledge-hammer and beating seven shades of
shit out of three Aston Martin DBSs.
Such is the madness of moviemaking. It
was Higgins who delivered the epic noc-
turnal power slide in front of the Vatican
in 2015’s Spectre. But what looks good
on camera doesn’t always feel that way
behind the wheel. “What they’re looking
for and what you think is cool can be
totally different,” Higgins explains. “It’s
about what the camera wants to see.
You have to make it look real; it has to
be almost a bit scrappy. Bond is under
pressure, so it has to be less fluid.
“It’s a very different pressure, because
there are 200 people out there,” he con-
tinues. “Repeatability is very important- and hitting marks. It’s totally different
to competing, but it’s still a buzz, espe-
cially when you’re doing the big scenes.
It’s a massive team operation. I might
be doing my little handbrake number
up here, but somebody else is doing a
big pipe ramp stunt behind me and if
I make a mess of my handbrake, then
that’s a £20,000 shot that’s potentially
set up specifically for different parts of the film’s chase and,
on closer inspection, have more in common with a world
rally car than a 1960s GT. The DB5 that got smacked by
the Range Rover has a metal bar reinforcing its body side,
another has a trick suspension configured to tackle steps and
jumps and they’re all fitted with hydraulic handbrakes, roll
cages and camera-mounting points.
Then there’s the car with the pod mounted on the roof,
its steering rack extended so that a stuntman can do the
showbiz showboating and the actor gets to play the hero
with impunity beneath. Corbould tells me his team have
now developed a pod car that works by remote control
from a range of 500 metres. But, for now, there’s still a
human on board and the main man on Bond is former Britishgone down the drain. Everyone has to
do their bit, especially when you’re
writing cars off or blowing them up.
[Pause.] And it’s dangerous.”
He also gets to wear the dinner jacket
and suit, but today his face is covered in
fetching black dots, part of the motion
capture technology that will see his
visage replaced by Daniel Craig’s in
post-production, a man he holds in high
regard as a driving protégé, it turns out.
“I can tell him which way the wheel goes
and which way to lean – it totally sells it.
That’s why the pod’s great, because the
wheel is moving as it should do. There’s
a clutch on it so it won’t get ripped out
of the actor’s hands and it can’t affect
what I’m doing up above. And Daniel
can drive, anyway. He enjoys all that.
And we obviously can’t act very well,
so he does that job for us.”For Bond geeks – and there are
millions of them – the background
detail is another object of obses-
sion. In excess of 140 vehicles were
prepped by Layton’s team for No
Time To Die and in Matera the DB5 is
flanked not just by gun-toting hench-
men in Jaguar XFs, but there’s also
a 1996 Maserati Quattroporte and a
2004 Lancia Thesis, a pair of sharky-
looking and rather obscure Italian
saloons that are expertly cast given
the context. These, too, will have been
fitted with small-capacity stunt fuel
tanks, hydraulic handbrakes and fire-
suppression systems. They’ll have
had their safety and stability systems
deactivated and even their brake
lights switched off, a job which means
rewriting software code on newer cars
or grappling with tricky electronics on
the older ones.
No stone is left unturned. Even the
ones covered in fizzy drink.Triumph Scrambler
1200 XE Range Rover Sport SVR Land Rover Defender Land Rover Series IIINO TIME TO DIE IS OUT ON 2 APRIL.04-20CarsBond_3432424.indd 95 31/01/2020 10:42
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