Inside Look: Stunt Driver's Experience in James Bond's Epic Car Chase 

A 2008 Aston Martin DBS V12 with Milan plates caterwauls along a tunnel that skirts Lake Garda followed by an eager duo of black Alfa Romeo 159s. The road is ludicrously busy but the rat-a-tat of a Heckler & Koch G36C assault rifle from one of the pursuing cars means that adhering to the Italian speed limit is not an option for the recognisable DBS driver. Even when a door disappears following a collision with a lorry, our hero remains fully focused on outrunning his adversaries. An oncoming HGV is expertly dodged but one of the Alfas behind is unable to make the gap and is slammed head on.

With a twist of the steering wheel 007 throws his DBS into a sharp left to avoid an unexpected roadblock and powers through short tunnels, but once under a full sky the raucous 5.9-litre engine attracts the attention of the Carabinieri, who join the furore in a Land Rover. The Aston is aggressively nosed onto the gravel track of a fully working marble quarry and a WRC-tinged downhill pursuit ensues along a dusty cliff-edge trail. The police are not up to the task and fall by the wayside, literally, while the lone Alfa finds itself outmanoeuvred and is furiously sprayed by the DBS driver’s submachine gun. The Alfa spins spectacularly down a ravine and the threat has gone. Apart from the missing door and a few dents and scuffs, the DBS remains doggedly mobile – and stunt driver Ben Collins has opened his account for the James Bond franchise.

“Quantum of Solace – my first Bond appearance and that’s probably the car chase I’m most proud of,” Collins affirms. “The fact that the film opens with the car chase that I drove on is a pinch-yourself moment. That part of my life, stunt driving, started when I watched Ronin. In that case it was the Audi screaming through the streets of Paris. I was motor racing at the time and perhaps naively thought, ‘I could do that.’ I started ringing people and got in touch with Gary Powell, a stunt co-ordinator who had worked on Bond movies in the past, and at the time was making Casino Royale. The next thing I’m at rehearsals in Italy and it was, ‘Right, you’ll be driving the Aston.’”

Today Collins wears numerous hats – or should that be helmets? As well as being a go-to stunt driver for big-budget films, he is a racing driver in the Britcar series, a writer and author – his latest book Aston Martin: Made in Britain was released in 2020 – and he can also call himself a YouTuber, having launched the Ben Collins Drives channel in 2021. And, of course, he was The Stig on BBC’s Top Gear from 2003-10, the ‘man in the white suit’ who was described by show script editor Richard Porter as “a mix of Kimi Räikkönen, the keyboard player from Pet Shop Boys and a 15-year-old forced to go on holiday with his parents”.

“I watched Ronin and naively thought ‘i could do that’” Ben Collins

When Robert Nagle, stunt co-ordinator on the 2019 motor-racing drama Ford v Ferrari, was hiring precision drivers to tackle the film’s action sequences, Collins was on his list. Starring Christian Bale as British racer Ken Miles and Matt Damon as GT40 project chief Carroll Shelby, the film focuses on Ford’s ruthless and over-officious campaign for victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours – and very watchable it is, too. “I’d become good mates with Robert, who I’d met on Fast & Furious,” Collins recalls. “He was looking to recruit a team of drivers and I got the call. The realism on that film is incredible. The core team of drivers was fairly small – I guess 12 to 15 of us did all the racing. Real pros, too. Several were sons of drivers from the original race. There was Derek Hill, son of Phil Hill, and Alex Gurney, son of Dan Gurney. It was pretty cool.”

Refreshingly there are few CGI special effects in Ford v Ferrari. All action is 100% authentic, and it is testament to Nagle’s choreography skills that the viewer is able to experience the track almost as if they are competing themselves. There are three races in the film – the 1966 Daytona 24 Hours, which Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby win in a GT40 Mark II, the dubious ‘dead-heat’ 1-2-3 Ford finish at Le Mans in 1966, where Miles was robbed of victory for the sake of a PR stunt, and an event at Willow Springs Raceway in California that didn’t take place but has been used to illustrate the close-knit friendship of the two main characters. Call it artistic licence. As for the cars, the Fords and Ferraris are replicas.

“The shells looked incredibly real when standing next to them,” Collins explains. “Inside they were a bit more shoddy and basic. It was a spaceframe with a V8 engine. On the straights we were still rattling along at 160mph and they would have easily gone up to 185mph. They were all different to drive and you had to show them respect, but fundamentally they were real and the clashes you see on screen are real.”

Racing manoeuvres were meticulously researched and planned by Nagle, who created a detailed ‘playbook’ complete with diagrams showing how and when cars should move. “You had no excuse for not knowing what to do,” adds Collins. Track scenes were filmed in the US using four locations in Georgia as sections of the 1966 La Sarthe circuit. The Esses, for instance, are turns at the Grand Prize of America track in Savannah. As for the Le Mans pits, grandstand and start/finish line, this was a faithful set created at Agua Dulce airport in California.

“The work in Savannah was incredibly hot and there were these insects that I later found out were called lovebugs,” Collins says. “They came in like a plague and they were all mating. They do this everywhere, including on your face if you let them. You’re in the car sweating like you’ve never sweated in your life. You want to open the door but if you do, bugs come in and land all over your body. I was impressed by the costume department because they laid on these cool bags which you could wrap round yourself. It was a lifesaver and it meant your endurance was longer and you could keep the bugs at bay.”

To bolster the racing realism, the Ford v Ferrari crew made use of several photo rigs including a 150mph, 640bhp self-propelled platform known as the ‘Biscuit’, so named after the 2003 film Seabiscuit that Nagle worked on. A car, actor and cameras can be positioned accordingly on the Biscuit’s low-lying shelf and frame, while a pro driver in a pod above the car tackles the straights and corners. Collins has similar experience from his Bond work. One of his memorable drives on Skyfall is Eve Moneypenny’s Land Rover Defender Double Cab chase in Istanbul. In total, six Land Rovers were used for the scene, with two equipped as ‘pod cars’.

“You sit on the roof,” Collins explains. “You’ve got the steering and the pedals and all the controls diverted to the roof. Naomie Harris, who plays Moneypenny, is seen as the driver. We did a load of training with Naomie so she became something of an off-roading guru but for the really complicated scenes, which can take weeks to rehearse and choreograph, that’s where the pod came in useful. You attach all the cameras to the side of the car and insert it into the action. It’s very unusual driving a Land Rover from the roof. For a start, it feels top-heavy. For the stuff where we were really going for it we widened the track and we used lower-profile tyres, which took the top-heaviness out of it.”

“It’s very unusual to be driving a Land Rover from the roof” Ben Collins

As well as precision driving, Collins made his acting debut in Ford v Ferrari playing Ken Miles’ New Zealand co-driver Denny Hulme in the film’s feature race. Following a casting session in which he was told to react to his brakes failing, Collins was given the nod and can be seen handing over the GT40 to Christian Bale in the pitlane. “It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment but there I am, on camera, delivering my big lines about the brakes being hot,” he says. In reality, Collins is no stranger to the real Le Mans, having started the 24 Hours in 2001, ’02, ’11 and ’14. He finished twice, his highest place coming at his third attempt – 12th overall and fourth in class – driving RML Group’s Acura ARX-01 Le Mans Protoype. When asked if he has unfinished business with the race, Collins quickly replies, “One hundred per cent.”

On September 30, we’ll be seeing more of Collins’ daredevilry when the next James Bond instalment No Time To Die – Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as 007 – is belatedly released.

Collins is remaining tight-lipped about the film: “All I can say is there’s a plethora of Astons and there are some great action sequences.” In fact, Aston Martin has confirmed we’ll be seeing a DB5, V8 Saloon (Collins’ all-time favourite Bond car), DBS Superleggera and there will be a cameo appearance from the Valhalla.

To complete the Brit bonanza, the new Land Rover Defender is making its screen debut, too. We can’t wait.