Let's face it, James Bond wins, in all of his movies, because he has the best cars.
OK, so he doesn't necessarily come through unscathed. He loses his wife, his boss, his co-workers and in the case of Roger Moore chatting up lovelies a third his age in A View to a Kill, all sense of dignity and propriety. However, in the end, he wins and the bad guys lose. Largely, one could suggest, because he has the best cars. After all, when the guy you're trying to foil has an Aston Martin, a Lotus or a BMW Z8, what can you hit back with?
Well, not a lot. Certainly not at first. In fact, in the first Bond film (not counting the little-seen NBC TV version of Casino Royale) Sean Connery needs only a lowly Sunbeam Alpine to see off the baddies' hulking LaSalle Funeral Coach. Starting out with a funeral coach was probably; let's face it, a bad move. You're just asking the hero to zing out a quippy one-liner as you plummet over a cliff.
From Russia with Love didn't see much of an improvement, as the bad guys tailed Bond around Istanbul in a Citroen Light 15 B11. A lovely car, and perfect for machine-gunning Nazis if you're a member of the French Resistance, but outmoded in the Cold War era. Oddjob's Ford Ranchero is scarcely an improvement in Goldfinger, but at least the title character gets some decent wheels - Auric Goldfinger's 1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III is not only swift, silent and comfy enough for a kip in the back, it's also made of solid gold, allowing the nefarious villain to easily smuggle the precious metal out from under the noses of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
Thunderball sees a general lift in the villainous motor pool. The insanely gorgeous Luciana Paluzzi, portraying the fatalest of femmes, Fiona Volpe, gets to ride a BSA Lightning with rockets hidden in the fairings, before giving Bond almost the last ride of his life (ahem) in a powder blue Ford Mustang. Twin airbags? Hang on; are we talking about the actress or the car?
There was a massive backward step in You Only Live Twice though - while Bond gets to swan around in a purpose-built Toyota 2000GT convertible, the villains' Toyota Crown is effortlessly seen off by a Japanese SIS CH-46 Sea Stallion helicopter. Ker-plunk. At least in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Ernst Stavro Blofeld upgrades from the Mini Mokes that scampered around his hollowed out volcano base and is driven around, briefly, in a Mercedes 600 Grosse. Proper baddy's car that.
We should probably gloss over Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun - they're basically crammed with awful early seventies American rubbish, with the pimp-mobile Chevrolet Coronado being a particular low point.
Ah, but then comes The Spy who Loved me, and while Bond gets his underwater Esprit, the bad guys get... er... a Ford Taunus. And some more Mini Mokes. Face-palm moment.
Moonraker passes by almost without a single interesting car (Hugo Drax's briefly-appearing Hispano-Suiza is about it) before For Your Eyes Only puts Bond back in an Esprit (and briefly a 2CV) and the baddies in a variety of Mercs, Peugeots and an actual Beach Buggy. Octopussy is just ridiculous because it puts a senior Soviet general in a Merc 280 S (had they never heard of a ZIL?) and while Bond gets a Bentley Continental S1 in A View to a Kill, the bad guys make do with, briefly, a Renault Fuego. At least Bond does the decent thing and breaks a Renault 11 in half...
The Timothy Dalton era doesn't see much of an improvement in the villains' leasing schemes - a few Czech police Ladas and a Land Rover 90 tarted up to look like a GAZ jeep is all they get in The Living Daylights while Licence To Kill is an interesting-car-free zone.
When Pierce Brosnan took over as Bond, the baddies finally got themselves a decent leasing deal. Famke Janssen got a Ferrari (stolen, as was my heart...) although while putting the Soviet general this time in a Volga was at least accurate, it may have been somewhat unkind.
Tomorrow Never Dies showed that leasing agent was a bit daft, as he recommended that they try to take down Pierce's BMW 750i with an Opel Senator and a Ford Scorpio. Oh dear. The World is not Enough must have followed that leasing agent's sacking, as the baddies basically don't drive much at all. And then we come to Die Another Day. The least said about the disappearing Aston Martin the better, but at least the baddies get to (briefly) have a GT40 replica, a 993-generation Porsche 911 Turbo and a tricked-out Jaguar XKR with rockets and machine gun before they're variously exploded, buried under ice and dropped out of an Antonov cargo plane.
Finally, though, as the Daniel Craig era kicked off with Casino Royale, the baddies' motor pool people got their act together. Various Jag XJs and Range Rovers are used to harass, menace and chase Bond and that theme is continued in Quantum of Solace, along with various hybrid and electric Ford Edges and Kas. Mind you, trying to chase down an Aston Martin DBS with a brace of Alfa 159s, even the 3.2-litre V6 versions, is asking rather a lot. Still though, a Land Rover Defender 110 and an Audi A5 in Skyfall suggest that Evil Vehicle Leasing Inc. is still getting its sums right.
Which brings us to Spectre, the 24th Bond film currently being made and the question of the bad guys' cars. OK, so Bond is getting a bespoke, made-only-for-the-film Aston Martin DB10 that kinda puts him in the pound seats. But then the naughty boys will be coming to battle with a 500hp Range Rover SVR. And some specially modified Defender ‘Bigfoots' with 37-inch wheels. And, the possible trump card, a Jaguar CX-75. Perhaps only the Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion could have convinced Jaguar to let its still-born mid-engined supercar out of the museum and with its 550hp supercharged V8 and knockout styling, it presents the greatest and strongest threat to Bond's fifty-plus-year motorised domination.