Sean Con­nery was a Scot­tish Nation­al Par­ty sep­a­ratist and a bit of an eccen­tric; and also, most every­one avers, a good guy. He lived in gat­ed, ultra-posh Lyford Cay in New Prov­i­dence, fifty miles from us on Eleuthera. He was intense­ly private—hard on vis­i­tors, who were always try­ing to see him. Appro­pri­ate­ly, he chose to live where he filmed so many escapades—romancing lovelies while fight­ing sharks, frog­men, taran­tu­las, bar­racu­da, octopi, gor­geous spies and implaca­ble masterminds.

Nassau

He used to go to this lit­tle bistro out­side of Lyford Cay. The restau­rant belonged to the sis­ter of a good friend. We would go there when­ev­er we were in Nas­sau. One night my friend I and had just returned from a north­ern fish­ing trip. We brought back salmon, some of which was fea­tured on the menu. Seat­ed a cou­ple of tables over were Sean Con­nery and his wife Miche­line, feast­ing on our fish.

The wait­ress, my friend’s niece, ges­tured toward us, telling Sean we were the ones who had actu­al­ly caught the salmon. As he was leav­ing he stopped at our table to thank us.

Anoth­er friend who was at the table, but not on the fish­ing trip, shook hands with Mr. Con­nery and said, “You’re wel­come.” We of course gave our friend action for hav­ing tak­en cred­it for some­thing he had no part of. He said he didn’t care what we thought—it was one of the high­lights of his life. He tells the sto­ry of shak­ing Sean Connery’s hand quite often.

London threesome

Here is anoth­er snip­pet that would oth­er­wise be lost to mem­o­ry. My friend Gar­ry Clark, our man­ag­er on a dozen Churchill tours, runs a fleet of lim­ou­sines and pri­vate cars in Lon­don. In 1989 he drove for the cast of the third Indi­ana Jones movie. He drove Sean Con­nery, Har­ri­son Ford and screen­writer George Lucas for a stag night on the town. Behind the wheel, Gar­ry was in stitch­es the entire ride. “Each of them was tak­ing turns, telling the oth­er two how far past it they were.”

Bond girls? Sure, but what about Bond cars?

Every car nut grow­ing up in that era was struck by the great cars in Ian Flem­ing‘s thrillers. Sean Con­nery drove them with verve and assur­ance. Each of us con­jured up the sen­sa­tion of being pressed against the seat­back under the urge of the car’s ter­rif­ic power.

Ear­ly on there was Bond’s super­charged 1930 Bent­ley 4 1/2-liter coupe. Arch-vil­lain Sir Hugo Drax ambushed and totaled it on the Dover Road in Moon­rak­er (1955). Drax him­self drove a Mer­cedes-Benz 300S cabri­o­let. “Bond had once dab­bled on the fringe of the rac­ing world,” Ian Flem­ing writes. “Lost in mem­o­ries, he heard again the harsh scream of Carac­ci­o­la‘s great white beast of a car as it howled past the grand­stands at Le Mans.” Or the huge sil­ver grand prix Mercs of Lang, Sea­man and von Brau­chitsch, “drift­ing the fast sweep­ing bends of Tripoli at 190, or scream­ing along the tree-lined straight at Bern with the Auto Unions on their tails.”

“He disagreed with something that ate him”

Bond’s friend, CIA agent Felix Leit­er, drove a Cadil­lac-pow­ered Studil­lac in Dia­monds are For­ev­er (1955). Leit­er let it out on the Tacon­ic State Park­way, doing 80 in sec­ond. Then his “hook” slammed the col­umn shift into high on the way to 100. (Leiter’s “hook” had replaced his right hand, eat­en by a shark in Live and Let Die, 1954, Flem­ing wrote: “He dis­agreed with some­thing that ate him.”) The Studil­lac didn’t impress Bond. “This sort of hotrod job’s all right for kids who can’t afford a real car,” he told Leiter.

Most mem­o­rable of all was Bond’s Aston Mar­tin DB5 (DB3 in the orig­i­nal text of Goldfin­ger (1957). Hol­ly­wood immor­tal­ized it with trick machine guns, rotat­ing num­ber plates, ejec­tion seat, water- and oil-sprayers, a bul­let-proof deck shield, and knock-off hubs which extend­ed to rip the guts out of oppo­si­tion vehicles.

“The Locomotive” (Bentley S2)

Nev­er seen in the films was Bond’s Bent­ley Con­ti­nen­tal S2, which he called “The Loco­mo­tive.” It appeared in the nov­el Thun­der­ball (1961). Flem­ing called it “the most self­ish car in Eng­land….. Some rich idiot had mar­ried [it] to a tele­graph pole on the Great West Road. Bond bought the wreck, straight­ened the chas­sis and fit­ted a new engine.”

Next he had Mulliners fit a cus­tom body: “A trim, rather square con­vert­ible with only two armed buck­et seats in black leather. The rest was all knife-edged, rather ugly, trunk.” [Not “boot”?] The Bent­ley was bat­tle­ship grey, “paint­ed in rough, not gloss…. She went like a bird and a bomb and Bond loved her more than all the women at present in his life rolled, if that were fea­si­ble, together.”

Fleming’s readers….

…were struck by The Loco­mo­tive, envi­sion­ing this incon­gru­ous Bent­ley head­ing to “work.” That took place in the mys­te­ri­ous, unmarked build­ing on Regent’s Park, “Uni­ver­sal Exports,” cov­er for Her Majesty’s Secret Ser­vice. Ian Flem­ing continues:

The twin exhausts—Bond had demand­ed two-inch pipes—he hadn’t liked the old soft flut­ter of the marque—growled soft­ly as the long grey nose, topped by a big octag­o­nal sil­ver bolt instead of the winged B, swerved out of the lit­tle Chelsea square and into King’s Road.

It was 9 o’clock, too ear­ly for the bad traf­fic, and Bond pushed the car fast up Sloan Street and into the park. It would also be too ear­ly for the traf­fic police, so he did some fan­cy dri­ving that brought him to Mar­ble Arch in three min­utes flat. Then there came the slow round-the-hous­es into Bak­er Street and so into Regent’s Park. With­in ten min­utes of get­ting the Hur­ry call, he was going up in the lift of the big square build­ing to the eighth and top floor….

The Locomotive Lives! (Update, 2021)

We recent­ly heard from pro­fes­sion­al car design­er and Bond fan Tony Hunter, who has brought Bond’s coach­built S2 Bent­ley back to life. The design, writes Tony

Nat­u­ral­ly we asked, what about the big sil­ver bolt radi­a­tor mas­cot? (In his draw­ings above, artist Tom Riv­el inter­pret­ed this lit­er­al­ly.) But Tony Hunter doubts this is what Flem­ing imagined:

What­ev­er you think was in Fleming’s mind, Tony’s recre­ation is tru­ly mag­nif­i­cent. (I’m glad he paint­ed it in gloss, not rough!) It’s authen­tic down even to the vin­tage tele­phone, Bond’s con­nec­tion to “Uni­ver­sal Exports.”

Further reading

Exu­ma, Jew­els in the Sea: Div­ing the Thun­der­ball Grot­to, 2013.