Like any good gearheads, your Jalopnik staff is getting pretty excited about the premiere of Spectre, the 24th installment in the franchise. It looks to have some pretty amazing cars in it too, and not all of them are Aston Martins.
That’s a proud tradition in the Bond flicks. While the movie spy is most closely associated with Aston Martin, the DB5 in particular, he originally drove a huge Bentley in Ian Fleming’s novels and has piloted many non-Aston cars in the film series — out of choice and out of necessity.
So that’s our question of the day: What’s the greatest Bond car that isn’t an Aston Martin?
I’ll get one of the most obvious answers out of the way: the Toyota 2000GT from 1967’s You Only Live Twice. Supposedly made into a convertible to accommodate the hulking Sean Connery, the gorgeous sports car wowed movie audiences at a time well before Japan’s car industry was the titan it later became. It stands on its own as a classic today for its looks, its performance and its limited production, but the Bond bump helps.
What are the other best cars for England’s greatest spy that didn’t come from an Aston Martin factory?
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.