As you may know, some of the Bond Cars recorded from the MI6's Q-Branch have been featured in Forza Motorsport 6, the latest installment in the highly-successful Forza franchise available exclusively on the XBOX One. I'll be briefing you with some of the most iconic Bond Cars featured in FM6.
The BMW Z8 is an open-top grand tourer heavily inspired from the legendary BMW 507 of the 1950's. As a production car, the Z8 features a combination of aluminum space frame and aluminum paneling. It's retro-inspired design was penned by Henrik Fisker who would later work for an Aston Martin DB9 before going on to create his own now-defunct car company behind the Fisker Karma PHEV.
Powering the Z8 is the similar 5.0L V8 from the BMW E39 M5, producing 394HP of power and 368.8ft-lb of torque, while mated with a 6-speed manual gearbox. 0-100kph takes about 4.7 seconds.
It was first revealed in the 1999 Bond film, The World is Not Enough, starring Pierce Brosnan, although its only shot to fame is when it went backwards for a few yards, fired a missile, and gets split into half. Later on, it was featured in Bond games such as 007 Racing, where a selection of Bond cars are featured in different missions, and 007: Agent Under Fire, a first-person shooter game.
In one episode of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson thinks that driving the Z8 feels like driving a Scania truck, so a tuned version, the Alpina Z8, was featured and when The Stig drove one, it set a lap time of 1:29.0.
We asked our Q-branch experts to send the Z8 round the Top Gear Test Track to see if this is as fast as the lap time set by The Stig several years ago.
After a lap round the Top Gear Track, our expert did it in 1:27.586, which is around two seconds faster than the lap time set by The Stig, which is quite an amazement for a Bond car that was underappreciated by some after watching it got split into half in a Bond movie.
MI6, end of transmission.
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