The celebrated Silver Birch-painted Aston Martin DB5 might be the best known of the myriad cars to have been put through their paces in James Bond films.
But Roger Moore (whom many still regard as the definitive on-screen 007) once cited the humble Citroën 2CV he drove in 1981’s For Your Eyes Only as being his all-time favourite. Now the car is up for grabs – having once been plucked from the Paris scrapyard where it was destined for the crusher.
On offer as part of an online sale being staged by Texas-based memorabilia specialist Heritage Auctions, the Mimosa Yellow car was one of the three modified 2CVs out of six examples used to film the seven-minute car chase.
It appears at the start of the sequence being driven by Melina Havelock (played by the fragrant Carole Bouquet), with Bond in the passenger seat, as the pair flee a villa belonging to the murderous Gonzales, who had assassinated Havelock’s parents.
Set in Spain but filmed on the Greek island of Corfu, the chase sees the car careering through country roads pursued by Gonzales’ henchmen in a brace of Peugeot 504s – before entering a sleepy village where the ever-enterprising Bond creates a confusing dust storm by grabbing the 2CV’s steering wheel and running over a bag of cement.
Subsequently this 2CV (which was fitted with a toughened interior and a more powerful 1015cc GS engine in place of the standard 602cc unit) is substituted for two even more heavily modified versions with safety cages and reinforced bodywork in order to cope with a series of collisions, jumps and rolls, before the on-screen chase ends with one of the cars flying through the air and landing in an olive grove.
When For Your Eyes Only wrapped, the three modified 2CVs were sent back to the UK, with one being sold to a collector and Bond car fan called Nigel Wild, another being taken back by Citroën for its museum, and the third – the car on offer here – being sent to Paris to be scrapped.
In the event it was saved by 2CV enthusiast Philippe Wambergue, who subsequently displayed it at a Dutch Citroën show – where Wild spotted it and confirmed it was one of the film cars.
During its short time in the scrapyard, the car lost its original doors, bootlid, roof and seats, but these were replaced by Wambergue before he sold the 2CV to the current owner in 2004.
The decidedly battered car is believed to be otherwise original, even down to the fake Spanish numberplates that still carry the name of ‘Tuckers’, the UK autoparts supplier that made them up.
Being offered as a ‘prop lot’ for display purposes, rather than for being driven on the road, the Bond 2CV will be sold with a certificate of authenticity and will be shipped to the new owner from its current location in the Netherlands.
Heritage opened the bidding at $120,000, but director Alistair McCrea believes the price could rise to as much as $500,000 by the time bidding ends on July 17, 2025.
Find the James Bond Citroën 2CV online here.
