The cynical way isn't difficult with the DB5 Goldfinger: it costs a lot, the Bond DB5 thing isn't exactly original and the guns aren't even guns. Pah. On the other hand, this is perhaps the most iconic movie car ever, lovingly assembled by Aston Martin and packed with actual functioning gadgets - from that point of view, it's easier to see the appeal. It's a bit of fun for those who can't play with Corgi toys anymore.
An expensive bit of fun, however, at more than £3m. And while there really is no movie car quite like a Silver Birch DB5, there are many four-wheeled film stars that have captured the imagination over the years. So that's the Buy Hard challenge for Matt and Sam this week: with an unlimited budget (or less than £3m, at least), find a movie car icon from the PH classifieds. It can be classic, brand new, something truly exceptional to drive or a limp old spudder; just as long as it was a played a worthy role in a film. Over to the boys...
Yep, I've gone for a Bond car. Who'd have thought it? But it's only because the Esprit S1 submarine from The Spy Who Loved Me is, without doubt, the coolest Q creation of them all. Perhaps even more so than the DB5. In 1977, the Lotus must have looked like something from the next millennium even before it had transformed into an amphibious vehicle. Is there a design more permanently futuristic than the S1's taut, angular form, set off by those dished five-spoke rims? The DB5 is glamourous, but the Esprit is surely more befitting a secret agent with such a high-tech armoury.
The S1, to me, is also one of the best Lotus designs, not as pretty as an Elan but more interesting as a clutter-free wedge with a near perfect silhouette. It's dinky, with a 2.44-metre wheelbase (26cm shorter than a Ford Focus's) and a 900kg kerbweight, so the S1's 162hp 2.0-litre can sprint it to 60mph in 6.5 seconds. And thanks to the motor's midship location, the Esprit has always been a great steer. That's surely top of the priority list for an agent needing to get away from Jaws and his henchmen. Q's amphibious mode would help, too.
My pick here obviously can't go underwater, but it's a beautiful example from the same year as that Bond film with the most seventies interior specification possible. It's all so in period, the space-age, angular dash and a green-on-red tartan seat cloth, a wood gearknob and switchgear worthy of an Apollo spacecraft. This one's had a recent engine rebuild, so it should be as mechanically fresh as it looks, with £20k's worth of restoration bringing it to the condition it is now. That, you might think, would more than make up for its lack of underwater fins. SS
Hands up: I love Will Smith. I love the good stuff - Fresh Prince, I Am Legend, Men in Black - as well as the bad. Under which I'd probably put Hitch, some of the songs (Switch in particular) and Gemini Man. But I still love him. And a lot of what he makes, if I'm brutally honest...
So while the obvious choice for this Buy Hard battle would have been to find a Bond car, or a Highland Green Mustang, or a Mini, I only had eyes for one thing: a black 964 Turbo, just like Mike Lowrey's in Bad Boys. The best film in the BB franchise, and easily the best car, too.
I watched Bad Boys once more just recently, what with it being the 25th anniversary of its release in 2020, and fell in love all over again. It isn't complex or high-brow, sure, but it is funny, cool and excellent entertainment, helped in no small part by a starring role for the 964 Turbo. Heck, it was even on the movie poster with Martin Lawrence, Will Smith and Tea Leoni, a key member of the cast like the actual human beings. Because why wouldn't it be?
And although Matt Bird driving a 964 Turbo in Margate won't have quite the same allure as Will Smith doing the same in Miami, this is the perfect Porsche to pretend like I'm the third Bad Boy alongside Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey. It's black (of course) with the shiny split rims, whaletail unmissable out back and brooding with attitude still despite its advancing years. There are many reasons why the 964 is the definitive 911 for a lot of people, and the look has to be part of that.
At £250k in 2020, I'd probably have to be more bad cop than good to afford a Turbo. But if the market's appreciation for the 964 has ebbed and flowed over the past quarter of a century, one Michael Bay film - and one particular actor - has kept it unerringly cool in my mind. What a car. MB
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