This one-off James Bond car was just a figment of Ian Fleming’s imagination – until now

This one-off Bentley – they call it The Locomotive – was designed for a James Bond movie but it hasn’t been used yet.

Inspired by the novel Thunderball, The Locomotive is a retro-futuristic icon with rear wheel arches that have 1950s written all over them.

The car looks fantastic, but it’s unclear whether it is ever going to feature in a James Bond movie.

The fact that we don’t even know who the next James Bond is going to be doesn’t help.

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This Bentley draws inspiration from Ian Fleming’s ideas

Even though we generally associate James Bond with Aston Martin, 007 author Ian Fleming was more of a Bentley man.

In the novel Thunderball, written in 1961, Fleming described a Bentley Continental Mark 2 as ‘the most selfish car in England’.

Tony Hunter, car designer and huge James Bond fan, decided to bring that car to life.

Using a 1953 Continental R-Type as a donor, the car was modified over the course of seven years to give it this distinctive look, and it was fitted with a restored 4.9-liter straight-six out of a Bentley S1.

The interior looks quiet and restrained, but the exterior – especially with those closed wheels at the back and black wheels at the front – looks menacing.

To us, The Locomotive looks more like the car the bad guy in a Bond movie would drive.

Speaking of which…what happened to James Bond?

No Time To Die, starring Daniel Craig in his final appearance as 007, was released in 2021 and we haven’t heard anything about James Bond since.

Eon Productions and Barbara Broccoli, the person who de-facto controls the James Bond franchise, haven’t said much either.

So, as of 2025, we still don’t know when the next movie is going to come out, what novel it will be based on and – more importantly – we don’t even know who’ll star as 007.

Several potential candidates with some serious box–office credentials have been mentioned here and there, but it’s just hearsay for now.

The only thing we can reasonably assume is that the actor who will be chosen will be reasonably young because that has always been the case so far.

Craig, for example, was 38 when he starred in Casino Royale, and both Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton before him were 41 when they joined the 007 franchise.

The thing is, even if they announced the new 007 actor tomorrow, it would still take a few years for production, filming and so on.

But who knows, maybe they’ve been writing the script and arranging production locations in secret for four years and just haven’t told us.

We’ll wait and see.