Thoughts from the Curb

Jul 29, 2008 - Countdown to Bond: Mustangs Are Forever

"Diamonds are Forever" is basically unwatchable. It's boring, totally absurd and barely follows up on the events of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." Oh, and in four years between Bond appearances, Connery looks like he aged about 20 years.

Now to the car. 007's ties to the Mustang dated back to "Goldfinger" when a brand-spanking-new 1964 1/2 Mustang was driven by Tilly Masterson in Switzerland. A Bond girl owns the 1971 Mustang Mach 1 in "Diamonds" as well, this time Jill St. John's Tiffany Case who goes from sharp-tongued smart-cookie to complete moron in the course of about three scenes.

While she putters about in it initially, Connery's Bond drives it to evade the cops through old downtown Las Vegas. It's not the greatest car chase in the world as you can see by the video -- sorta Blues Brothers-lite -- but it does include one of the most obvious continuity flubs in film history. As the above photos show, Bond goes up on two right wheels then emerges on two left wheels. The editor tried to correct this in post by flipping the mid-alley in-car shot, but that's obviously quite stupid -- if the car had enough space to do that, it could have just driven through.

The car itself was the Mach 1 and as you can clearly tell, this was a big ol' Stang, the largest iteration of the original platform that debuted back in '64. The fastback roof in particular makes it look positively huge, almost shooting-brake-like. There were four engines available throughout this Mach 1's three-year run, and three were actually used for "Diamonds." The smallest 302 V8 was used for stunts like the side wheely, but the big 429 Cobra Jet was the car that did most of the high-speed work in Vegas.

I actually got to see one of the Mach 1 movie cars at the Petersen Auto Museum, and of all the American cars Bond has driven over the years, the Mach 1 is certainly the coolest -- not a difficult distinction, though, since most totally sucked.

5:50 pm | Categories: bond cars Permalink | Alert Administrator

Add to: