The Spy Who Loved Me

Vehicles

• 

  Lotus Esprit S1

  Car1976

  Q delivers the white wedge at the pier in Palau; this is the car that shoots off the coast road into the sea and carries on as a submarine

  The Esprit had been on the market for barely three months when shooting began. Lotus supplied two road-legal cars for the driving scenes and six further bodyshells for the transformation, one of them sealed watertight for the underwater work. The first footage from the mountain roads of the Gallura looked flat; when works test driver Roger Becker ferried the car between two locations, he was handed the stunt driving for the rest of the island shoot. The wedge shape is Giorgetto Giugiaro's, and under the glassfibre skin sits a steel backbone chassis with the four-cylinder mounted transversely behind the seats. Only 718 S1s were built between June 1976 and 1978 – the film made the car a household name overnight.

  Driven by

  James Bond, with Anya Amasova beside him in Sardinia

  Specs

  2.0 L four-cylinder (Lotus 907, 1,973 cc), 160 bhp, 133 mph, under 1,000 kg

  Sources: Bond Lifestyle: Lotus Esprit · Wikipedia (en): Lotus Esprit · Wikipedia (en): The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

• 

  Kawasaki Z 900 A4 mit Raketen-Seitenwagen

  Other1976

  At the push of a button the sidecar detaches and flies off as a missile

  On the coast road above the Costa Smeralda one of Stromberg's men latches on to the Lotus. A solenoid releases the sidecar, which shoots off as a missile – it misses the Lotus, destroys a van loaded with mattresses, and the blast throws the rider over the cliff into the sea. The sidecar was a vehicle in its own right: two ten-inch wheels, a 185 cc Suzuki engine and a stuntman lying flat inside, steering with a small solid rubber wheel. It never went faster than about twenty miles an hour; the speed came from undercranking in the cut. The Z 900 continued in 1976 the line of the Z1, with which Kawasaki had launched the first mass-produced Japanese four-cylinder with twin overhead camshafts in 1972.

  Driven by

  One of Stromberg's henchmen

  Specs

  903 cc DOHC four-cylinder, 82 bhp at 8,500 rpm; quoted top speeds range from 120 to 132 mph

  Sources: IMCDb: 1976 Kawasaki Z 900 A4 in The Spy Who Loved Me · Wikipedia (en): Kawasaki Z1 · Motorcycle Classics: Son of Z1 – The 1976 Kawasaki KZ900 · Wikipedia (en): The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

• 

  Ford Taunus Ghia (TC2)

  Car1976

  The black car with four occupants, whose windscreen the Lotus sprays with cement before it goes over the cliff into a hut

  Jaws sits in the back of the black Taunus, the driver in front and two gunmen firing out of the windows. From nozzles behind its number plate the Lotus sprays liquid cement across the windscreen; blinded, the car mounts the kerb, plunges down the cliff into a hut and goes up in flames – only Jaws climbs out of the wreck. The Taunus '76 was the second iteration of the TC range, built from January 1976 and largely identical to the British Cortina Mk IV. The coupé of the first series was dropped; what remained were the two- and four-door saloons and the estate. Ghia was now the top trim level, replacing the earlier GXL.

  Driven by

  One of Stromberg's drivers, with Jaws and two gunmen aboard

  Specs

  Range from 1.3 to 2.3 litres, 55 to 108 bhp, up to 107 mph; top engine the 2.3 L V6 with 108 bhp

  Sources: IMCDb: 1976 Ford Taunus Ghia [TC2] in The Spy Who Loved Me · Wikipedia (de): Ford Taunus TC · automobile-catalog: 1976 Ford Taunus 2.3 V6 Ghia

• 

  Bell 206 JetRanger

  Aircraft

  Stromberg's helicopter, from which Naomi fires machine guns at the Lotus – until a missile from the diving car finds it

  Naomi collects Bond and Amasova, posing as a couple of marine scientists, from the pier and flies them out to Atlantis. The same machine reappears above the coast road, now with machine guns on the skid gear, and drives the Lotus off the tarmac into the sea. It is still circling the spot when a missile rises from the submerged car and pulls the helicopter into the water. Built from 1966 onwards, the Bell 206 JetRanger became by far the most widespread civil turbine helicopter with well over seven thousand built: five seats, a single turboshaft and a two-bladed rotor system that made it cheap to run.

  Driven by

  Naomi

  Specs

  Allison 250-C20 turboshaft, 400 shp, 140 mph, five seats

  Sources: Bond Lifestyle: Bell 206 JetRanger · Wikipedia (en): Bell 206

• 

  Spirit Marine Wetbike

  Boat1977

  The two-ski watercraft on which Bond approaches Stromberg's Atlantis for the finale; the film made it famous worldwide

  For the finale the USS Wayne puts out a craft that looks like a motorcycle on two skis; on it Bond rides back across the open sea to Atlantis to fetch Amasova before the submarine torpedoes the place. The Wetbike was designed by Nelson Tyler and built by Spirit Marine, a subsidiary of Arctic Enterprises. At the time of filming it was a pre-production example – it only went on sale in 1978. At rest the hull floats; under way it rises onto the two skis, driven by a pump jet and steered by the forward ski. The Wetbike stayed in production until 1992, when easier-to-handle personal watercraft such as the Yamaha WaveRunner displaced the design.

  Driven by

  James Bond

  Specs

  Suzuki two-stroke with 50 to 60 hp, pump-jet drive, twin skis

  Sources: Wikipedia (en): Wetbike · Wikipedia (en): The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

• 

  Leyland Sherpa

  Car1975

  The grey van lettered as a telephone service, with a listening post in its load bay

  Disguised as a telephone service vehicle, the Sherpa stands outside the club at Karnak while Jaws, in the load bay, listens in on the bidding for the microfilm. After the fight among the columns Bond and Amasova take the van and are left stranded with it in the middle of the desert; there Jaws catches up and takes the bodywork apart with his bare hands, panel by panel, until little more than the chassis is left. British Leyland had launched the Sherpa in 1974 as the successor to the J4. It was narrow enough for tight city streets, which is why Royal Mail and British Telecom preferred it to the Ford Transit for years; up front sat the B-series four-cylinder at first, replaced by the O-series in 1978.

  Driven by

  Jaws, then Bond and Amasova

  Specs

  1.6 or 1.8 L B-series four-cylinder, from 1978 the 1.7 L O-series with 61 bhp; load space about 5.4 m³

  Sources: The Autopian: This Bond Movie Has The Only Scene In All Of Cinema Where A Dude Fights A Van · Wikipedia (en): Leyland Sherpa · motor-car.net: Sherpa van 1974–82

• 

  Royal Navy HMS Ranger, U-Boot der Resolution-Klasse

  Boat

  The British nuclear submarine whose disappearance without trace sets the film in motion

  The Ranger is invented, her surroundings are not: for the filming the Royal Navy opened its base at Faslane on the Gare Loch, where the four boats of the Resolution class then lay – Resolution, Repulse, Renown and Revenge. From 1968 to 1996 they carried the British nuclear deterrent, each with sixteen Polaris A3 missiles and two crews that alternated on patrol. In the film the Ranger is found at depth by Stromberg's tracking system, swallowed by the tanker Liparus and her crew locked up in its belly; her missiles are later to be fired at Moscow.

  Driven by

  A Royal Navy crew

  Specs

  130 m long, 8,400 tons submerged, Rolls-Royce pressurised water reactor, 25 knots submerged, crew of 143, 16 Polaris A3 missiles

  Sources: Wikipedia (en): Resolution-class submarine · Wikipedia (en): HMNB Clyde · Wikipedia (en): The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

• 

  US Navy USS Wayne, U-Boot der Benjamin-Franklin-Klasse

  Boat

  The American submarine Bond and Amasova put to sea on – which then sails straight into the jaws of the Liparus

  Commander Carter runs the tanker's presumed course with Bond and Amasova aboard. The tracking system finds this boat too: the Liparus opens her bow and swallows her like the other two. In the tanker's belly Bond frees the three crews and, out of the battle, has the captured boats fire their missiles at each other instead of at Moscow and New York. The Benjamin Franklin class was the last and quietest iteration of the American Polaris submarines: twelve boats were launched between 1963 and 1967, six of them later converted to carry Trident missiles.

  Driven by

  Commander Carter and his crew

  Specs

  130 m long, about 8,250 tons submerged, pressurised water reactor, 21 knots submerged, 16 missiles (Polaris A3, later Poseidon C3)

  Sources: Wikipedia (en): Benjamin Franklin-class submarine · Wikipedia (en): The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

• 

  Sowjetische Seekriegsflotte Potemkin, Raketen-U-Boot

  Boat

  The vanished Soviet boat that makes General Gogol send out his best agent

  The disappearance of the Potemkin puts Moscow in the same position as London and is why Major Amasova travels to Egypt. In the end the boat lies alongside the Ranger and the Wayne in the belly of the Liparus; under Stromberg's plan her missiles are to hit New York while the British ones aim at Moscow. She is seen only in miniature shots. The Soviet missile carriers of those years were the boats of Project 667B, known in the West as the Delta class: in service from 1972, 139 metres long and armed with twelve R-29 missiles whose range of 7,700 kilometres allowed patrols in the sheltered Arctic Ocean.

  Driven by

  A Soviet crew

  Specs

  Delta class (Project 667B): 139 m long, 10,000 tons submerged, 25 knots submerged, 12 R-29 missiles

  Sources: Wikipedia (en): Delta-class submarine · Wikipedia (en): The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

• 

  Stromberg Shipping Liparus, Supertanker

  Boat

  The tanker that swallows submarines like a whale; behind the hinged bow lies a dock with three berths

  The Liparus sails under Stromberg's flag and has not entered a port since she was commissioned; she is supplied at sea. Behind the hinged bow lies a dry dock with three berths, along with workshops, crew quarters and a control room. No studio in the world was big enough for the interior, so the 007 Stage was built at Pinewood specially, with a water tank in which the submarine sets floated. Ken Adam designed the whole thing and was nominated for an Academy Award for it together with Peter Lamont and Hugh Scaife. The exteriors were done with a catamaran miniature about 19 metres long by Derek Meddings, which genuinely swallowed submarine models of the same scale off Nassau. Accounts of the ship's size differ: 600,000 and over a million tons are both quoted.

  Driven by

  A captain and crew in Stromberg's service

  Sources: BMT 216A: Tanker Liparus · Model Ships in the Cinema: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) · Wikipedia (en): 007 Stage · Wikipedia (en): The Spy Who Loved Me (film)

• Karl Stromberg Atlantis, Unterwasseranlage

  Other

  Home and laboratory on four legs off Sardinia, which sinks into the sea at the touch of a button

  Atlantis stands on four legs in the sea and draws its round living section under water to submerge. Inside, Stromberg receives his guests in a salon with large portholes behind which the sharks circle, and drops a disloyal secretary through a trapdoor into the tank. Ken Adam deliberately designed the structure against the straight lines of his earlier Bond sets, working with domes and curves; the effects were handled by Derek Meddings with a model about two and a half metres tall – so large that a quarter-scale model of the Lotus had to be built for the underwater run. The underwater photography was done off Nassau in October 1976. In the finale a torpedo from the USS Wayne tears the structure apart.

  Driven by

  Karl Stromberg

  Sources: Wikipedia (en): Ken Adam · Model Ships in the Cinema: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) · huntingbond.com: All movie locations from James Bond „The Spy Who Loved Me“

• Nachtzug von Ägypten nach Sardinien

  Other

  The sleeping car in which Jaws attacks the pair and finally goes out of the window

  How the train gets from Egypt to the Sardinian port of Palau is left open by the film; no such connection exists. The sequence was shot entirely at Pinewood Studios. In the compartment Jaws blocks the pair's way; Bond smashes a standard lamp and presses the live ends against his steel teeth until he topples out of the window. For the fall Bob Simmons doubled the two-metre Richard Kiel although he was a good deal shorter himself, and went through real window glass rather than the usual sugar glass. Jaws grabbing Bond's face beforehand was Kiel's own idea.

  Driven by

  Bond and Amasova as passengers

  Sources: 007.com: The Spy Who Loved Me Train Fight

• 

  Dromedar Reitkamel in der ägyptischen Wüste

  Other

  Bond rides a camel through the dunes to Sheikh Hosein's tented camp

  Bond's Egyptian leg begins on camelback: he rides through the dunes to the tent of his old Cambridge contemporary Sheikh Hosein, who gives him the name of the middleman Fekkesh. The desert scene was filmed at Saqqara south of Cairo. The animal comes up a second time when Q demonstrates a camel saddle with a hidden blade behind the colossi of Abu Simbel. The single-humped dromedary has been the pack and riding animal of North Africa and Arabia for millennia: it carries heavy loads, keeps up long daily stages and goes for days without water.

  Driven by

  James Bond

  Sources: bondmovies.com: The Spy Who Loved Me – Cars & Gadgets · Filming Locations for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) – movie-locations.com

• 

  Feluke Segelboot auf dem Nil

  Boat

  The lateen-rigged boat that takes the pair down the Nile to the rendezvous after the breakdown in the desert

  Once the van has given up in the desert, Bond and Amasova continue on foot and finally by water: a felucca takes them down the Nile to the agreed meeting point. The boarding was filmed on a bank of the Nile near Luxor. Feluccas are the traditional sailing boats of the river, shallow-built and without a continuous keel, carrying a single triangular lateen sail on a long, steeply raked yard. Downstream they drift with the current; upstream they sail on the steady northerly wind.

  Driven by

  An Egyptian boatman, with Bond and Amasova aboard

  Sources: huntingbond.com: All movie locations from James Bond „The Spy Who Loved Me“ · Filming Locations for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) – movie-locations.com