Roger Moore: his greatest roles with cars
ROGER MOORE: OCTOBER 14, 1927 – MAY 23, 2017
Every actor who played James Bond has a moment that exactly marks the point when they made 007 their own and with the late Sir Roger Moore this occurred in The Spy Who Loved Me. Sean Connery and George Lazenby could have piloted an aquatic Lotus Esprit but only Roger would emerge from the Mediterranean and proceed to drop a fish out of the window.
Not unexpectedly, this vignette was devised by Moore himself and it further inspired countless future Lotus owners to spend their pocket money on a rather splendid Corgi die-cast model. If any chap was born to drive a Q-modified white Esprit while insouciantly evading a metal-toothed giant in a Ford Taunus Ghia, it was Roger Moore.
When The Spy Who Loved Me was released on the July 7, 1977 Roger Moore had nearly 30 years’ experience of vehicle-related screen appearances, the first being a 20-minute Automobile Association training film shot near Guildford; Moore was naturally cast as the AA’s most dashing patrolman.
Sir Roger Moore – his finest car moments
Over the next six decades, Moore could be seen in cars ranging from an Aston Martin DB5 in The Cannonball Run to a Jaguar XJS in The Wild Geese, with five vehicles becoming legends, thanks to their co-starring with a true gentleman of the screen.
The earliest of these is, of course, The Saint, in which Sir Roger co-starred with a succession of Volvo P1800s. If that were not reason enough to acquire the box sets, fine machinery is guaranteed in virtually every episode, with a Taurus-tuned Austin Mini Cooper 1071S and a Jensen FF just two of the delights awaiting the novice viewer.
My own favourite edition is The Queen's Ransom which showcases Sir Roger’s immaculate comedy timing, in addition to having him escaping from a Mercedes Benz 220 Fintail, the standard company car for all self-respecting 1960s television hitmen. The plot also has Simon Templar using a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II to evade this week’s gang of heavies in a white Jaguar Mk1 - which, thanks to that famous stunt footage, was inevitably destined to plummet into Betchworth Quarry.
In The Counterfeit Countess, Roger is trapped in another equally doomed ITC regular, a red Renault Dauphine - naturally he escapes just before the it departs the road. Only hypercritical viewers would point out that the Renault has apparently gained a Jaguar bonnet, as continuity was of little consequence in a programme where Roger Moore looked so incredibly suave.
The true automotive stars of the show were the succession of white Volvos, all bearing the ST1 number plate. It is sometimes intriguing to speculate if The Saint would have enjoyed as much success had Jaguar provided the show with a MkX, but when the P1800 made its debut in the opening show, The Talented Husband, it just looked absolutely right.
The Volvo was always an infallible car, whether Roger was driving "abroad" - courtesy of back-projected stock footage - or evading hoods in a not overly rapid Ford Zephyr 4 MkIII.
After The Saint concluded in 1969, Moore’s next televisual transport was courtesy of Aston Martin. Any programme that opens with a John Barry theme tune and has Roger driving a DBS6 Vantage with an overdubbed V8 engine note was clearly destined to be an instant classic of the small screen, and The Persuaders! even had the splendid closing credit "Lord Brett Sinclair’s clothes designed by Roger Moore".
The show’s publicity emphasised "exotic locations" although quite a large amount of The Persuaders! was filmed in the UK; true devotees of the series never minded right-hand drive NSU Ro80s with mocked-up "Italian" number plates. A typical storyline might have our hero engaging in a battle of speed with the Dino 246GT belonging to Tony Curtis’ fellow playboy/crimefighter Danny Wilde before squiring a mini-skirted guest star to Pinewood’s finest casino set, only to encounter this week’s white-tuxedoed villain.
Newcomers to the series are directed towards the 19th adventure, The Morning After, which features our heroes in a very early press fleet Range Rover. A chase scene featuring one of one of Britain’s greatest 4x4s in action matched with obvious studio sets, Curtis ad-libbing his dialogue and a soigné Roger clad in an outfit best described as uber-1970s – this is television at its most entertaining.
The Persuaders! marked Sir Roger’s last major television outing prior to the 007 films, but it was not until his third picture that he would finally be issued with a true "Bond Car", as well as uttering music hall quips about keeping the British end up with true aplomb.
Moore noted in his engrossing book Bond on Bond that Lotus provided the production team with two cars and five bodies for the submarine adaptations carried out by Perry Oceanograhics. After filming concluded, Sir Roger was offered the chance to buy an Esprit at "a 10 per cent discount. Needless to say, their overweening generosity was not something that particularly excited me".
Finally, we have the Rover P5 3.5 Litre saloon and the Lamborghini Islero S of The Man Who Haunted Himself, the low-key British thriller that showcased Sir Roger’s so often underrated talents as a straight actor. The plot had one Harold Pelham, an upright Rover-driving London businessman acquiring a doppelganger with a taste for Italian grand tourers, the two characters seeming to be entirely different, thanks to Moore’s clever use of body language and vocal tones.
In later life, he wrote that "it was a role that needed an actor. I had that written in my passport, so felt somewhat qualified".
This was a typically modest comment made by an actor whose performances never failed to delight generations of cinemagoers and TV viewers. Whether he was driving a Volvo somewhere near Elstree Studios, an Esprit past some rather startled holidaymakers in Sardinia, a Bahamas Yellow DBS through Monte Carlo, a Rover along the M4 or embodying the ideal AA patrolman, Roger Moore always delighted his audience. He will be sorely missed.
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