As you may know, some of the Bond Cars recorded from the MI6's Q-Branch have been featured in Forza Motorsport 6, the latest installment in the highly-successful Forza franchise available exclusively on the XBOX One. I'll be briefing you with some of the most iconic Bond Cars featured in FM6.
Today's Bond car is the Aston Martin DBS, which is featured in two Bond films such as Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, as well as Bond games such as Blood Stone and 007 Legends, driven by James Bond actor Daniel Craig.
The DBS is essentially a high-performance version of the DB9 and although it uses the same V12 engine the DB9 carries, the DBS develops about 510HP of power and 569Nm of torque. 0-60 takes about 4.3 seconds and a top speed of 191 mph (307 km/h) and 183 mph (295 km/h) with Aston Martin's TOUCHTRONIC 2 transmission.
There is a well-known tidbit about the DBS when it was featured in Daniel Craig's first Bond movie, Casino Royale, back in Autumn 2006, regarding the scene where Bond violently swerves to avoid Vesper Lynd and then accidentally rolled over seven times. The stunt drivers rehearse the scene using a second-hand BMW which is easier to roll but when they provided a prototype model, in the form of a modified DB9, they figured out that its aerodynamics made it difficult to roll. One person suggested that they should fit a cannon somewhere...and it did. By the time the Aston was totalled, it had set a new record for the most number of rolls in a car stunt.
Two years later in Quantum of Solace, Ben Collins, who was The Stig on Top Gear back then, is hired as a Bond stunt driving instructor and he was a double for Daniel Craig in the opening high-speed chase.
When Daniel Craig was not in the middle of Bond movies before Skyfall, he and the DBS were involved in Bond games as well. In the 2010 Bond game, Blood Stone, the DBS was featured in driving missions involving chasing against a suicide bomber targeting the Acropolis, where the world leaders are stationed for a meeting, chasing down rogue industrialist Stefan Pomerov in Siberia, and chasing down Nicole Hunter, played by singer Joss Stone, in a climactic car chase from Monaco to the Millau Viaduct. Two years later, in 007 Legends, the DBS takes place from the V12 Vanquish on a chase through Gustav Graves' cargo plane in Die Another Day.
When the DBS was featured in Top Gear, The Stig set a lap time of 1:23.93, which is faster than the old Aston Martin V12 Vanquish S. We decided to give it to one of our experts and have it compared against its real-world lap time set by The Stig.
Sadly, our expert from Q-Branch couldn't beat The Stig's lap time because he did it in 1:26.364, which is around three seconds slower than The Stig's.
MI6, end of transmission.
