Ian Fleming, Car Guy
Fiction is like reality.
Or is it the other way around?
Fiction writers inevitably cast characters after themselves, family, or friends. Ian Fleming wasn't at all shy about it: He was intelligent, a covert agent in the British military, possessed of a cracking wit and love for the finer things in life. Said finer things included an appreciation for gourmet food, attractive women--to whom he was generally not married--and automobiles. It's no surprise, then, that his character of all characters, James Bond, was crafted in the same vein.
While Bond stuck to Bentleys and Aston Martins, his creator's tastes were somewhat different. Fleming described some of the cars he owned and other automotive experiences in "Automobilia," a short story first published in April 1958. In spite of the fact that Fleming was born of wealth, the cars he drove in his youth were largely unremarkable. He wrote first of a British Standard, then a Morris Oxford. An article entitled "Avanti, Mr. Fleming," published in the Ian Fleming Foundation's magazine Goldeneye, discusses Fleming's ownership of a Bedford Buick (Bedford was the trade name under which Buicks were sold in the U.K.), though he himself never wrote about it.
The author in character: Ian Fleming at the wheel of a 4 1/2-liter "blower" Bentley, an early relative to one Bond drove in the early 007 novels. After meeting its end at the hands of villain Hugo Drax, Bond replaced it with a Bentley Continental SII. This photograph of Fleming appeared on the Oct. 7, 1966, cover of Life magazine, a little more than two years after Fleming's death.
It wasn't long before the young raconteur stepped up to a Lagonda 16/80, which he proclaims "the worst car I ever had. I fell in love with the whine of its gears and its outside brake. But it would barely do seventy, which made me ashamed of its sporty appearance." Fleming's first real American car (if you don't count the Bedford) was a Graham Page convertible coupe, of which he commented favorably.
After WWII, Fleming went through another series of interesting if not particularly noteworthy rides: a Renault, a Hillman, a 2.4L Riley, and a Daimler. Not long after the original Bond novel "Casino Royale" of 1953 brought notoriety and some cash, Fleming found himself hooked on an unlikely mistress, Ford's new Thunderbird. Based on statements and other chronological events, the car was either a '55 or '56 T-Bird, black, with the removable hardtop.
"The reason I particularly like the Thunderbird," notes Fleming in "Automobilia," "apart from the beauty of its lines and the drama of its snarling mouth and the giant, flaring nostril of its air intake, is that everything works. True, it isn't a precision instrument like English sports cars, but that I count a virtue. Everything has a solid feel. The engine--a huge adapted low-revving Mercury V-8 of five-liter capacity--never gives the impression of stress or strain." Fleming went for another T-Bird a few years later, a '60 four-seater hardtop, as his wife Anne was said to have hated the smallish nature of the first one.
The final car purchased and driven by Ian Fleming was another American, and an appropriately timeless choice at that. After two T-Birds, it would make sense that he'd want something different. He was captivated by the design of the new-for-'63 Studebaker Avanti upon its introduction. He bought one immediately, also in black, with the rare Paxton-supercharged V-8 and an automatic transmission. Fleming spoke and wrote so glowingly about his new Avanti, there was a rumor in England that he might've gotten a better than average deal on the car in exchange for the endorsements. While (unhappily) this notion doesn't seem like a big deal nowadays, it would've been scandalously unthinkable at the time for an author of Fleming's stature. One wonders where this historic, and valuable, Stude is today.
One thing's for sure: In spite of at least one accident (in the latter Thunderbird) and a few other close calls, it seems as if Fleming treated his cars better than Bond did. The author chose to save all the wrecks, explosions, and sundry automotive destruction and abuse for his readers, not his personal rides.--M.S.