Will Bond be back in the seat?

by Nick Drew | Sun 07 Dec 2014

Will Bond be back in the seat?

This past week the new James Bond movie title was announced, SPECTRE will be the secret agent’s 24^th outing and will follow the highly successful Skyfall.

Much of the appeal of Bond movies for me personally is when excavators, wheeled loading shovels and the like are used in the plot. Who could forget the action packed opening 10 minutes of the 2012 blockbuster Skyfall, which saw the intrepid Bond take to the controls of an unusual looking Cat 20 tonne excavator on the back of a train hurtling through the Turkish countryside. Despite being shot in the shoulder Bond still manages to grab the last passenger carriage of the train with the excavator’s bucket, before clambering out through the roof of the cab and running along the boom and dipper before leaping into the gaping hole he has just torn out of the train!

Of course over the years there have been many different machinery related scenarios in the Bond movies. One would imagine it’s now a big part of the movie business, with many companies jostling to have one of their products in the limelight of the action and paying big money to do so! In Bond’s 3^rd outing Goldfinger, (1964) an orange peel grab equipped crane is featured in the scrap yard scene, where Oddjob disposes of Mr Solo by having a Lincoln Continental car “recycled” and retrieves his share of the gold in a “crushing engagement”.

Plant & machinery was also featured in the 1971 movie Diamonds are Forever, with an unconscious Bond being lowered into a trench concealed inside a pipe, before being backfilled by a wheeled loading shovel. Caterpillar machines also featured heavily in the 1999 movie The World is not Enough with forestry spec machines, skid steer loaders and wheeled loaders all making an appearance. Without doubt though some of the latest films have featured the most exciting machinery stunts, with Casino Royale in 2006 featuring Bond on a New Holland W190B wheeled loading shovel leaving a trail of carnage in hot pursuit of the villain! The same movie also included the dramatic tower crane climb and chase scene.

So will Bond be seen at the controls of something construction related in SPECTRE? I guess we will just have to wait until October next year to find out.

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