007 finds British intelligence no match for German efficiency

By DAVID LINKLATER

We've been expecting you, Mister Bond. But we were expecting you to be driving an Aston Martin.

Unless you've been living in a box for the past year, you'll know that James Bond is back in The World is Not Enough, opening in New Zealand movie theatres before Christmas.

Also back is a BMW-sponsored vehicle fleet for Her Majesty's Secret Service. This time the star car is the new Z8, an aggressive looking roadster with 4.5 litres worth of M5 V8 under the bonnet.

The Z8 makes it a BMW hat-trick for Pierce Brosnan's Bond, joining the much-hyped but seldom-seen Z3 of Goldeneye and the heavily armed 750 of Tomorrow Never Dies.

It's been a hard road for BMW with hardcore Bond fans. After all, ask anybody what kind of car James Bond drives and the answer will almost certainly be an Aston Martin.

There's just one car and one movie responsible for this fervour: the gadget-laden Aston DB5 of Goldfinger, from 1964. Goldfinger set the template for every Bond movie that followed.

And the gadget-laden DB5, with its rotating licence plates, concealed machine guns, oil sprayer and passenger ejector seat, became synonymous with Britain's best secret agent.

With Sean Connery at the wheel, the DB5 became popularly known as "the most famous car in the world" - remarkable for a car that only starred in one film. After a brief appearance in the opening scenes of Thunderball, the silver DB5 disappeared for 30 years.

But the Aston Martin badge did not. Australia's true blue Bond, George Lazenby, drove a six-cylinder DBS in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, perhaps in an effort to link the unknown newcomer with the popular Connery.

Roger Moore's Bond was definitely a Lotus Esprit man. While the model may have lacked the elegance of the old Aston coupes, at least it was British. The car-cum-submarine in The Spy Who Loved Me achieved almost as much notoriety as Connery's DB5, and the now-unfashionable wedge shape of the Esprit complemented Moore's flared trousers perfectly.

Aston was back with Timothy Dalton at the wheel in 1987's The Living Daylights. This time it was the latest V8 model, with a "winterised" option pack comprising spiked tyres, side skis, lasers and a self-destruct button.

Which brings us into BMW mode. The news that Pierce Brosnan's Bond would drive a Z3 in 1996's Goldeneye was a pretty big deal at the time. A pretty big deal for the German carmaker, too, with some serious opportunity for pre-launch Z3 promotion.

There was talk that the film's producers wanted the new Aston DB7 for Bond. And more talk that Aston wouldn't come to the party with cars and a big enough advertising budget.

So the Z3 it was, although even the most devoted BMW enthusiast would have been disappointed with the Goldeneye Z3. Despite Q's assurance that it had "all the usual refinements," the new BMW was on screen for just three minutes, with not so much as a missile launched. Things were much better in Tomorrow Never Dies, with a high-tech, highly modified 750 dealing to the bad guys in a thrilling car-park car chase.

But there was also something to appease the purists in Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies. When Bond was done with the BMW company car, he drove a classic DB5 home at night. The number plate said it all: BMT216A, the same as Connery's Goldfinger car.

We were even treated to an entertaining - if unlikely - car chase above Monaco in Goldeneye, where Bond's softly sprung, oversteering Aston gave a Ferrari F355 a good run for its money.

But there is a certain irony in Brosnan's Bond driving that beautifully preserved DB5. He may be the archetypal English spy, but the movie Bond we have known over 18 films has seldom put his faith in old technology.

Britain may still produce the world's best celluloid secret agent, but it's been a long time since it produced the best cars.