James Bond Cars

From Aston Martins fitted with ejector seats and water cannons to a Lotus Esprit reborn as a submarine to a Venetian gondola improbably reimagined as a hovercraft, the vehicles of the James Bond cinematic franchise are as iconic as the spy himself. Enter James Bond Cars, Assouline’s third fully-authorized title devoted to 007 (following James Bond Destinations and James Bond Style) and the most comprehensive chronicle ever published of not just the twenty-five films’ legendary automobiles, but also all the other must-know machines of land, sea, and air—whether motorcycles, helicopters, speedboats, blimps, snowmobiles, jet-packs, or even the bizarre one-offs developed specifically for Bond’s world (the “Little Nellie” autogyro from 1967’s You Only Live Twice comes to mind).

Curated and introduced by Academy Award–winning special-effects supervisor Chris Corbould, OBE, who has worked on fifteen Bond films, James Bond Cars is both a full-throttle visual catalog and an insider’s account of how filmmakers engineered some of cinema’s most unforgettable stunts. The book features more than three hundred images, from rare behind-the-scenes stills to design drawings to production ephemera, and Corbould’s commentary lifts the curtain on the secrets of those masterful sequences (think engineering hacks, one-take-stunts, near-disasters) and the rides that powered them.