TO ME, the ultimate spy car would be an Alfa Romeo 147. Small, sexy and very subtle.
It may not be an Aston Martin but at a fraction of the price it doesn’t stand out as much either.
What kinda car would a spy drive; I imagine it’s not a Ferrari or Lamborghini unless trying to infiltrate a super wealthy, boys club, drug cartel or the Top Gear test track. Chances are they would drive something more hum drum like a Volvo estate or BMW 5 series. Think of all the uses you could get out of a Volvo estate, didn’t Roger Moore’s Simon Templar character drive a Volvo sports car?
Well Lotus, Astons and BMW Z cars are great but they turn heads, surely that’s the opposite of what a spy needs or maybe that’s why Bond, James Bond was always being caught.
If you parachute into a scene with a Union Jack, you kinda give away your identity. I would have parachuted in with an Irish tri colour with a very red orange and a black smudge in the middle. That way the enemy could say they were attacked by either the Irish, Italians or India.
Red Flag, in Afghanistan for example, the CIA provided the Taliban with non-American missiles for a long time to maintain plausible deniability.
A non-English car perhaps. One of my favourite Bond Cars was of course the BMW 750 driven in Tomorrow Never Dies. Not the sexiest car by far but a great Bond car capable of carrying all of his gadgets and packing a punch with its V12 engine.
The BMW 750il was the first European car to offer satellite navigation and the first BMW with an in-built television. Fast forward to today and we could all do with a self driving car the way everyone uses phones while driving like Pierce Brosnan´s Bond in a 7 Series BMW. Funny that fingerprint recognition Ericssons smartphones never took off.
I would have marketed the BMW 700 next to a mirror to get the 007 digits but my choice of car is of course the Italian 147 which was car of the year in 2001 and was still being sold up until 2010. Think about that. An ageless car that could blend in with all the golfs and hot hatches out there.
Then there is the engine, my old car pictured above was only a 1.6 litre model but the GTA version had twice that. A 3.2 litre engine lurking behind a regular looking hatchback’s grille. Unlike some other hot hatches out there, this V6 model doesn’t have racing stripes and aluminous decals, it just looks like an ordinary 147. 150mph, slower than an Aston but not bad performance from an Alfa.
The Alfa may have a reputation for breaking down but how reliable are Aston Martins or any supercar for that matter when it comes to being used everyday? Bond’s cars normally don’t last much longer than 2 hours anyways being cut down the middle by a helicopter, missing doors, self destructs and dodging women left in the middle of the road.
Bond has briefly driven an Alfa GT6 in Octopussy but only a Graduate would drive an Alfa sports car and even then Dustin Hoffman had to take the girl home by bus in the end.
Bond, get an Alfa, if you get it up and running, they will never see you coming.
Comment with your choice of car and the reasons why. How about a Tesla?
Remember Commander Bond started life as a car enthusiast and drove a DB3 in the novel Goldfinger.
REAR VIEW MIRROR: Alfa Romeo versus Aston Martin, we all know which car would win.
Special thanks to Lukasz Gudaniec for the beautiful HDR photo of my first Alfa Romeo 147.
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