1962 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II CUB 1

In the movie A View To A Kill (1985), James Bond (Roger Moore) is driven around in a 1962 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud II by Sir Godfrey Tibbett (played by Patrick Macnee).

The impressive Rolls can be seen in several scenes in and around Château de Chantilly. The car is pushed into a lake by May Day and Max Zorin, while Tibbett and Bond are knocked unconscious in the car. Bond saves himselve by breathing the air from a tyre of the Rolls. However, the car used for the lake scene was a replica as the real Rolls was owned by Bond film producer Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli. The license plate of the original car reads CUB 1, but for the film it was replaced with license plate 354 HYK. The same car can also be seen in the movie Thunderball (1965), when it is parked on the parking lot of health clinic Shrublands (Chalfont Park House).

Albert R. Broccoli, several Bond actors, EON associates and celebrities were driven around in the Rolls-Royce CUB 1 by chauffeur Jimmy O'Connell. The story about the car and driver were recently chronicled by author and Bond fan Mark O'Connell, a grandson of Jimmy, in Catching Bullets – Memoirs Of A Bond Fan. Bond cars and Bond alumni were a familiar feature in both Mark and his father’s childhood – with CUB 1 being the prized leading star his grandfather Jimmy would conduct curtain-twitching vigils to protect overnight and whose chauffeur’s uniform and love of horses (which he shared with Cubby Broccoli) was inadvertently echoed by Macnee’s character.

CUB 1 was a familiar sight around London’s Mayfair district (where Eon Productions had their first offices) and of course Pinewood Studios, where the Rolls naturally had its own parking space. CUB 1 featured too in an O’Connell family wedding and writer Mark wonders if it can be a tradition repeated one day for his own nuptials! Talking of which, in a production house where traditions are imperative, it is still a Broccoli tradition that CUB 1 escorts producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson to the royal premiere of each 007 movie. 2012’s SkyFall was no exception as CUB 1 steered Barbara Broccoli to the biggest red carpet in 007’s history.

Read more about the entertaining and fascinating book, Catching Bullets – Memoirs Of A Bond Fan (with a Prelude by Barbara Broccoli, Foreword by Mark Gatiss and Afterword by Maud Adams).