James Bond cars come loaded with gadgets, and now and then somebody has to sit next to the driver while he uses them. So we handed the passenger a rideshare app and asked for a rating. These are the James Bond car gadgets that went off with a passenger in the car, from the Aston Martin DB5’s oil slick and ejector seat to the Lotus Esprit’s cement spray and the eight-gadget escape in The Living Daylights.
Each ride is ranked by the rating its passenger left, out of 5. Passenger reviews and ratings are invented. The gadgets are not.
8 to 7: Rider Has Notes
8. Harold Strutter’s Car, Live and Let Die (1973)
Q sits Live and Let Die out, so this car gadget comes from the CIA. In New York, Strutter, an agent working with Felix Leiter, had a two-way radio built into his dashboard cigarette lighter, and Bond used it to talk to Felix. For once, Bond is the passenger, and the one leaving the review.
Features used: cigarette lighter radio
Rating: 3.0
Bond’s review: “The lighter is a radio. Clever. It’s also the only feature.”
7. Bentley, From Russia with Love (1963)
This ride never left the picnic. Bond and Sylvia Trench were out by the water with his Bentley parked nearby when the office paged him, and he answered on the car phone: “James Bond here.”
Features used: car phone
Rating: 3.4
Sylvia’s review: “Lovely car. Driver took a work call in the middle of our date.”
6 to 4: Would Ride Again
6. Aston Martin DB5, Goldfinger (1964)
The DB5 that started it all, and the one with two passengers. Earlier in the film, Bond used a blade from his wheel hub to shred the tyres on Tilly Masterson’s Mustang. Later Tilly rode with him as Goldfinger’s men gave chase: smoke out the back, oil on the road, and a steel shield rising behind the rear window. After Bond was caught, he drove back with one of Goldfinger’s guards in the passenger seat. That’s when he pressed the button Q had warned him about, and the roof opened. Aston Martin later built 25 new Goldfinger DB5s with working versions of the smoke screen and rear shield and a simulated oil slick. The roof panel over the passenger seat is optional equipment, and there’s no ejector seat on the list.
Features used: smoke screen, oil slick, rear bulletproof shield, passenger ejector seat
Rating: 3.9
Tilly’s review: “Same driver who shredded my tyres earlier. A 3.9 is generous, given how we met.”
Second rider: left the trip early, through the roof. No review was received.
5. Lotus Esprit S1, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Bond and Anya Amasova, a Soviet agent on the same case, drove the Lotus along the coast roads of Sardinia with Stromberg’s people after them. A car closed in behind, and the Lotus sprayed wet cement over its windscreen. The car went through the roof of a house. What Bond did with the Lotus at the end of the pier is a different kind of ride.
Features used: rear cement spray
Rating: 4.3
Anya’s review: “Competent evasive driving, for a capitalist. Points off for what he did at the end of the pier.”
4. Aston Martin DB5, Thunderball (1965)
The shortest ride on the list. Bond flew out of the château by jetpack to the DB5, where Madame La Porte, a French agent, was waiting. Bouvar’s gunmen gave chase. Up came the bulletproof shield, and out came two jets of water from under the back bumper. Pursuit over.
Features used: rear bulletproof shield, rear water cannons
Rating: 4.5
Madame La Porte’s review: “Pickup was a man in a jetpack, which the app has no category for. Smooth after that.”
3 to 1: Tip Included
3. Aston Martin DB5, No Time to Die (2021)
The DB5 again, this time in Matera with Madeleine Swann aboard. During the chase through town, mines dropped from the back took out a pursuing car. Then Spectre’s gunmen trapped the DB5 in a square and opened fire, and the bulletproof body and glass held. The guns came out from behind the headlights, and the car left the square in a cloud of smoke.
Features used: mines, bulletproof body and glass, machine guns behind the headlights, smoke screen
Rating: 4.7
Madeleine’s review: “Strangers spent a long time shooting at my window. The window won. I did not know headlights could do that.”
2. Aston Martin DB5, GoldenEye (1995)
Caroline was an MI6 evaluator sent to assess Bond. He assessed the hills above Monaco at speed, including a race with Xenia’s Ferrari. When she asked him to stop, he pulled over and produced a chilled bottle of Bollinger and two glasses from a compartment in the car. It’s the one gadget on this list built for the passenger.
Features used: chilled champagne compartment
Rating: 4.8
Caroline’s review: “Driver went well over the speed limit, then handed me champagne. Great ride. My report says otherwise.”
1. Aston Martin V8, The Living Daylights (1987)
Eight features, one trip. Bond got Kara Milovy and her cello out of Czechoslovakia in the Aston while the police radio told everyone to look for a man, a woman and a cello. When Kara asked what was going on, Bond’s answer was “I’ve had a few optional extras installed.” He wasn’t exaggerating. A laser from the front wheel hub sliced the body off a police car. Missiles behind the fog lamps blew up a truck at a roadblock. The glass took gunfire, spiked tyres gripped a frozen lake, and outrigger skis kept the car upright after its tyres were shot out. A rocket booster jumped them clear, into a snowbank. Then the car blew itself up, and the two of them finished the trip on her cello case.
Features used: police-band radio, laser in the wheel hub, missiles with a head-up display, bulletproof glass, spiked tyres, outrigger skis, rocket booster, self-destruct
Rating: 4.9
Kara’s review: “Driver wrecked the car and kept the cello. He understood the priority.”
The DB5 gave rides in four of these films, but the best seat went to a cellist in a different Aston, and the passengers who rated highest were the ones whose gadgets were working for them, not around them.