Why I might just go and see Fast & Furious 6

A CONFESSION. Despite being a keen connoisseur of car culture I haven’t seen the last Fast & Furious movie. In fact, it’s worse than that. I haven’t seen any of the Fast & Furious movies.

Question is, should I put this silver screen oversight right when the latest instalment in the full-throttle series, the imaginatively-titled Fast & Furious 6, when it arrives in my nearest multiplex later this month?

It’s not as though I don’t enjoy a cinematic helping or two of power oversteer after all. I revelled in Ronin. My full-throttle tastebuds were sufficiently tickled with both the Taken movies, and while Nicolas Cage’s overacting might have ruined the remake of Gone In Sixty Seconds for me, I wasn’t too bothered because it offered up plenty in the way of automotive pornography. And don’t get me started on the automotive appeal of the Bond films.

 Weirdly, though, I’ve always managed to avoid the one current film franchise which doesn’t just feature car chases and carefully-executed drifting, but makes them its raison d’etre. Why? Partly because the automotive actors vying for top billing are predominantly heavily modified Japanese and American actors, and when the first instalment came out way back in 2001 it just didn’t interest a 15-year-old car bore looking longingly at pictures of Triumph Stags and TVRs. It also didn’t help that it starred Vin Diesel, who less than a year later I saw making a complete hash out of being a skater-turns-secret-agent in Xxx. The Fast & Furious films, by extension, I’ve avoided for fear of being a bit crap.

 But the new one, even for someone who works for Classic Car Weekly rather than Fast Car, looks faintly promising. For starters, one of its stars is MK1 Escort, the trailer’s packed with shots of gritty bits of London and Jensen Interceptors, and there’s plenty in the way of pointless cinematic explosions.

Naturally, the more cynical cinema buffs among you could reason that the Fast & Furious franchise has got old and boring enough to appeal to a classic car fan, but I’m going to pretend instead it’s me who’s got more, er, street for a film about modified cars and explosions to suddenly look interesting.

I might just be tempted to venture to the nearest multiplex on this one...

Bond's Aston Martin DB5 looks stunning in Skyfall

YOU always know from the amount of secret agent-themed ads on telly when there’s a new Bond blockbuster on the way.

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past year you’ll already know that 007’s latest adventure is called Skyfall, and will feature Daniel Craig in his third outing as the suave secret agent, once you’ve got through Adele crooning her way through the theme song. I also freely admit I’m very nearly as much of a Bond nut as I am a car nut – even though I’ll enjoy pretty much any movie which features explosions and car chases, I always reserve a particular fondness for the Bond films.

But what’s really whetting my appetite for the new one isn’t a sultry sidekick or a spectacular storyline. It’s those publicity shots of Bond’s DB5 on the spy’s trip to the Scottish Highlands.

The DB5 has always been a fabulously good looking thing but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the quintessential Bond car in a more breathtaking setting. There’s a moody, bleak beauty to the scenery while the car obviously gives the shot a very retro feel; the classic English GT eating up the miles through the stunning Scottish landscapes.

In fact, that’s pretty much what director Sam Mendes went for, and told national media earlier this year: “I felt it was a thematic thing. It's definitely about the old and the new. And there's something about the last part of the movie which deliberately, very consciously, could have taken place in 1962.”

The thing I love most of all about these pictures is that, in much the same way the Daniel Craig movies have tried to take Bond back to basics, devoid of CGI and gadgets, so these shots take the DB5 away from being a cheesy automotive cliché and remind car nuts what it really is and what it does best; it’s a classy, handcrafted GT car, designed to wind its way over mountain passes in speed and comfort.

Forget the race against the Ferrari F355 in Goldeneye – this is what a classic Aston is all about. Fingers crossed then, with Mr Mendes appearing to do the DB5 justice in these shots, that’ll he take good care of 007 himself in the new film.

Skyfall hits the cinemas later this month. I, for one, can’t wait.

The ultimate Christmas movie

A NIGHT spent watching Liam Neeson shooting his way through the Parisian underworld has just proved one of my favourite pet theories.

All good car chases follow a formula.

It’s like knowing that Nicholas Cage has starred in lots of good movies but never a truly great one, or that the best Bond was actually Timothy Dalton (but you’re not prepared to admit it). All the best car chases are in continental thrillers.

Take, er, Taken. It’s a gritty movie which sees Neeson play a quietly-spoken American who spends most of his time shooting criminals, cheesing off the Gendarmes and generally destroying Paris at the helm of an Audi A8. Just like Robert de Niro did ten years earlier in Ronin, arguably the best car chase film of all time.



Almost any film I can think with a truly brilliant car chase involves egging some executive express through the narrow streets of a continental city, preferably Paris in an Audi. I’m beginning to think A8 sales in France are almost exclusively led by film directors.

The legendary C'était un rendez-vous puts you behind the wheel of a Ferrari charging its way through – you guessed it – Paris, but the actual car doing the driving is the director’s Mercedes. It goes with the theory perfectly.



British car chases have the action but not the exotic locations, as the A59 towards Preston is hardly the prowling ground of quietly spoken assassins with names like Jean-Claude or Jacques. Cold War thriller The Fourth Protocol looked promising with several good chases, including this great sequence with St Pancras station and a Rover Vitesse, but unfortunately using a Ford Transit as the main motorised star lets it down.



Bullitt and The French Connection fly the flag for Hollywood, but it doesn’t detract from the movies themselves never quite matching up to the hype. And having a car chase as the entire movie (that’s you, Vanishing Point and the original Gone In Sixty Seconds) doesn’t make up for it.

Nope, the best car movies are still the gritty ones placed in Paris, as long as you forget Roger Moore, Renault and Grace May in A View To A Kill.

Forget It’s a Wonderful Life. Forget Miracle on 34th Street, and even forget The Great Escape.

Rent Ronin instead and bore your loved ones this Christmas with the greatest car chase movie ever made. You won’t regret it. Much.