The history of the British secret agent is intimately linked to cars, especially the iconic Aston Martin, but there are a few motorcycles that slipped into Agent 007’s eternal adventure.
The first
The story of James Bond begins in the novels and it is there that Ian Fleming gave Agent 007 his first motorcycle. It was the BSA M20 that Bond drove in the novel ‘From a View to a Kill’. It is a military model that was manufactured until 1955 with a 496 cc single-cylinder four-stroke engine capable of delivering 13 hp and reaching 4,200 rpm.
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To the big screen
The first motorcycle that Bond ever drove in a movie is almost a joke. This is the Honda ATC 80 that Sean Connery drove in “Diamonds are for ever.” This crude tricycle had an 89 cc single cylinder engine and only delivered 7 CV of power, since it was designed exclusively for the winter, when the sale of motorcycles was plummeting. ATC wasn’t Bond’s choice, he stole it from “the bad guys” on the run.
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A bad very bad
This rocket launcher motorcycle is not driven by Bond. In the 1965 film Thunderball, Specter’s agent Fiona Volpe, played by Italian Luciana Paluzzi, rides a gold-painted BSA A65 Lightning. Fiona fires two rockets that destroy the car that is chasing James Bond, played by Sean Connery. The brand is not visible on this bike, the emblem was removed from the fairing.
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Yamaha Turbo
In the 1983 film “Never say never again”, Bond played by Connery chases a villain with a powerful Yamaha XJ650 turbo. An indomitable monster in those times very difficult to carry to the bottom due to the “lag” of the turbo. The setting was the Côte d’Azur where the mighty 653cc was driven as it couldn’t be but … it was a movie.
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Out of time
‘GoldenEye’ marked the return of James Bond to the big screen with a new actor. Pierce Brosnan played Agent 007 and did it at the controls of a Cagiva W16 600 from 1994 which made fans destroy the film because it was set in 1986, but Bond escapes from a chemical weapons laboratory in Russia with this motorcycle…. … from 1994.
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The best chase
The best motorcycle chase is considered to be that of the movie “Skyfall” starring Daniel Craig aboard a Honda CRF250R in the Istanbul market. It is a motocross model whose latest version participates in the MX2 World Championship. And it is very popular in Japan.
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Another indomitable
Another bike from Brosnan’s time as James Bond is the 1997 BMW R1200C Cruiser featured in ‘Tomorrow never dies’. Bond steals this motorcycle to escape from Elliot Carver’s barracks in Vietnam with a Chinese agent to whom he was also handcuffed, which does not prevent him from doing impossible maneuvers in real life. It had a huge 1,170 cc boxer engine and could reach 168 km / h.
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The last
The latest premiere ‘No time to die’, brings the last great bike of the entire saga of agent 007. It is a Triumph Scrambler 1200 XE driven by Daniel Craig. This classic air scrambler has a 1,200cc twin-cylinder engine capable of developing 90hp of power. The English brand launched a “Bond edition” of only 250 units with the tank decorated with the logo and the British flag that sold out in a few hours.
