David King is to Aston Martin, what Q is to James Bond. As head of Special Operations, he heads up the team behind all of Aston’s limited-edition cars (like the Valkyrie hypercar), all the high-performance versions of Aston’s road cars, as well as bespoke one-off designs made to order.
It’s hard not to imagine him and his crew locked in a high-security warehouse wearing black boiler suits and welding masks. And in the run up to a Bond film, that's not so far from the truth.
King's other responsibility is to deliver all of Aston Martin's Bond cars to the brief given by producers Eon. For No Time To Die that meant creating a bespoke stunt Aston DB5 from scratch; a faster, more agile and more resilient version of the 1963 classic, that was capable of delivering some of the most intense chase scenes in Bond history.
It's the first time in Bond history that it's been done to this level. As you can see from the trailer, the car is set to become a star of the film in its own right. We sat down with King to find out how it came to be:
How does the relationship with Eon and Aston Martin actually work?
The relationship has being going on a long time, it only works from movie to movie. It's not like we've got a contract that says will be in the next 10 films. And typically, when they start thinking about the next movie, they make contact and they come and have a visit.
They’ll normally meet with our chief creative officer Marek Reichman. Come and kick some ideas around about based on a loose idea of the plot or the script. They might have an idea what they want, but they're also looking for inspiration.
Give us an example of how the conversation might go.
Take the example of the DB10 {in Spectre}. They came in to the styling studio to walk around, and we showed them what we've got, trying to nudge them towards maybe featuring the new DB11 in the film and they actually said ‘no, we want something a bit more extreme’.
And then they saw a concept car in the corner and said ‘we'd like that’. Then that turned into creating a completely unique car.
Have you ever had to politely say no?
I guess the fascinating thing about it is that it’s a sort of negotiation, but if we say no to anything we risk them saying they’ll find someone else to do it. So you almost have to work miracles. I pride myself on the fact that my department can do that.
Tell us how you came to build a special ‘stunt’ DB5 for No Time To Die.
They (Eon) came and said, “well this film needs a DB5 in it because it fits with the plot. And we think based on what we're going to do with it, we're going to need eight cars, all capable of doing extreme stunts. And we need them in six months time.”
The initial thought is, how the hell are we going to afford to buy eight DB5s, repaint them all the right colour, modify them so they can do all the stunts and not completely trash them at the end, particularly with the price of DB5s these days [£1.5m+ a car]?
So then it was the job of my team and my engineers to work out what we could do instead and I came up with the idea - pretty quickly - of building some replicas. It was the only solution.
How did you go about it?
We sourced a 3 litre straight six powertrain from a modern day car, and we designed a simple, tubular spaceframe-type chassis, like a racing car 20 or 30 years ago. We then laser-scanned a real DB5, which the design team then smoothed off.
If you scan a 60-year-old handmade aluminium car it’s not symmetrical, so we made a perfect shape of it and then we used that to create the panels. Then it’s about doing all the details right - some bits are originals like the lamps. And then we added some modern suspension and brakes and some hefty dampers.
By some happy chance really we created something awesome. We went from thinking ‘can we just make it stumble through the film just about okay’ to something that seems bulletproof to drive.
What was the hardest part?
There's nothing fundamentally difficult on the engineering side. It's about doing it quickly. We set up a small project team, rented a bit of extra space to build the car so we can keep them separate and secret. And then then it's just meticulous project management.
The attitude is to always find a way. When you've got a license to innovate and you’re only building eight cars, it's amazing what you can make with rapid prototyping and 3D printing.
It was only about four or five people doing two shifts. You have to get some sleep sometimes. If you get the chance to design and build the new Bond car, well that’s what they live and breathe for.
What’s your role during filming?
On set, we provide a load of spares as sometimes the cars get damaged deliberately - sometimes accidentally - and we send a team out to be part of the crew when they were on location. Because if something goes wrong with the car, they can't afford to wait for us to fly someone out to fix it. Although this car turned out to be bulletproof.
No Time To Die is out on April 3rd
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