It was only a short time after "Goldfinger" went the rounds of the movie theaters, the Aston Martin went on tour of British automobile agencies. The stunt driver who did Sean Connery's driving in the more hairy scenes went with the car and gave talks about the car at British car dealerships around the country (U.S.) and it was at the Seattle dealership that a friend of mine and I went to have a look and listen.

There it sat, in the middle of the show room floor with the stunt driver (who resembled Connery a bit) standing by. The Aston Martin was surrounded by some pretty nice iron, Jaguars, both sports cars and saloons, a couple of shiny Rolls', some others I didn't recognize……   They were to drool over!

The driver said that everything in the car—with the exception of the passenger ejection seat—actually worked. The explosion of the shell that ejected the seat would have killed or seriously injured the driver as well as blowing the passenger out through the roof. The axle that extended with the tire-cutting buzz-saw also worked, but he said it was sufficiently delicate that they installed it only when they were going to use it. But he said to bring the car into the United States, they had to remove the machine guns under the front fenders.

One gizmo that they didn't use in the movies (at least by the time the car was on tour) he said was totally impractical for the stated purpose. The ram bumpers. The front and rear bumpers would extend about three feet and were intended to be used to ram another car.   But, he said, they actually would not have protected the Aston Martin that much. He went on to say that they did have one practical use, however. If you parked, just extend the bumpers (they extended about three feet, for and aft) and nobody could block you in. If they did, all you needed to do was retract the bumpers and you'd have six feet of room to maneuver in.

But progress progresses. Recently, I've seen commercials on television for a couple of new cars that have detectors and computers on board that will automatically maintain a safe distance between it and the next car ahead. Collision avoidance device. If that gets around, it should solve the tailgating problem. The driver's own car with not allow the car to tailgate.

Don Firth