Looking back on Casino Royale, in many ways the Aston Martin DBS - which Bond took spectacularly poor care of - might have been the best supporting character in the film (with apologies to Mads Mikkelsen).
It turns out the sleek supercar was drafted in by Barbara Broccoli herself, according to an article by Evo, who writes that the influential producer loved the car so much she put the pressure on the carmakers to build a model that didn't even exist yet.
"Aston’s prototype workshop pulled out all the extruded aluminium stops to hand-build two identical DBS ‘hero’ cars that could be used for close-up shots and gentle driving," it said.
Gentle driving wasn't exactly what scriptwriters had in mind however, especially in the scene where Bond chases after a 'kidnapped' Vesper Lynd before swerving to avoid her tied up in the road, barrel-rolling the car in the process - a pretty difficult task, it turns out.
Evo explains that the stunt team "set up the eight-inch ramp" to flip the car, based on some rally cross crash they'd seen on the internet. However: "the Aston proved a lot more stable than those crusty 5-series and, with only limited chances to get this right, the ramp was raised to 18 inches" to try and achieve an impressive multi-roll sequence.
But the DBS still wouldn't give, and in order to achieve the desired result the car had to be "fitted with a gas cannon that used pressurised nitrogen to punch a metal ram out of the bottom of the car and flip it onto its roof."
The stuntman swerved the car to the left and hit the metal ram with a result, "even more spectacular than the stunt team had imagined, " setting a Guinness World Record for most cannon rolls in a car in the process.
A record nabbed from Top Gear who we're sure didn't mind surrendering their title for 007.
