British Auto Maker Aston Martin Reestablishes a Longtime Bond

The world is right again. James Bond will be back in the driver’s seat of an Aston Martin in the next 007 film, working title “Bond 20,” to be released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. next year.

In a one-pic placement pact with the studio, Aston Martin Lagonda agreed to pay an undisclosed fee to have the fictional British agent drive a new Aston Martin Vanquish in the film. (Rumors picked up by Highway 1’s Secret Service agents say it is a seven-figure deal, at least).

The car, which sells for $228,000, is a hand-built exotic with a body of aluminum and carbon fiber, a 460-horsepower V-12 engine and a Formula One-type sequential-shifting transmission.

And though you will be able to watch Bond motor away from the bad guys in his, you’re out of luck unless you are one of the 700 people who already have ordered a V-12 Vanquish, tying up everything the factory can produce through 2003.

So why, if it is sold out, did Aston Martin need to spend big bucks to get the car in a movie to generate more public awareness?

Chalk it up to corporate pride.

Wolfgang Reitzle, chairman of Ford Motor Co.’s Premier Automotive Group, of which Aston Martin is a part, put it this way: “When people think of James Bond, the first car they think of is Aston Martin.”

That’s not true of younger moviegoers, though. For the last half of the 1990s, Bond’s cars were BMWs, and Reitzle was a top executive with the Munich-based Bayerische Motoren Werke.

He joined Ford in 1999. Shortly thereafter, Ford began the negotiations that ultimately bounced Bond out of his Bimmer.

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From a purist’s point of view, that’s only proper.

When the late Ian Fleming penned the original James Bond novels, the agent with a license to kill regularly drove an Aston Martin.

And shortly after Albert and Cubby Broccoli began producing the Bond films for MGM, they put Agent 007 into an Aston Martin DB4 (modified to look like the forthcoming DB5) in “Goldfinger” (1964) and kept him in a real DB5 in “Thunderball” (1965) and a DBS model in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969). He also used a DB5 for a short while in “GoldenEye” in 1995. In between those last two, Bond drove an Aston Martin Volante in “The Living Daylights” (1987).

In those days, Aston Martin wasn’t paying to have its cars used. It just made sense. Bond was the premier British agent, Aston Martin was the premier British performance car, and the guy who created 007 wanted him to drive one.

Then placement deals came along, and in a move that made news, BMW bought the rights to stick Bond into a then-new Z3 roadster for a few scenes in “GoldenEye,” where it took over from the DB5 as the new “official” car given Bond by the Secret Service’s skunk-works unit.

Bond next used a BMW motorcycle and a remote-controlled BMW 7-Series luxury sedan in “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997) and a BMW Z8 roadster in the most recent 007 film, “The World Is Not Enough” (1999).

Enough apparently was enough for Aston Martin, which soon started negotiating with MGM for placement rights to the next Bond film.

The deal took 18 months to put together, and though none of the parties will publicly discuss matters, reportedly set off a bidding war between Aston Martin and BMW. Winning was important to Aston, insiders say, because the brand is part of the Bond lexicon.

“It’s almost like a spiritual thing,” Aston Martin spokesman Simon Sproule said. Not only that, he said, but the deal “puts Aston back on the world stage in a way no advertising could do.”