James Bond's BMW Z3 never fired a missile, and fans noticed
The Z3 roadster was the first BMW built only outside Germany, in South Carolina, and it launched alongside GoldenEye as Bond's new car. The film gave it hidden missiles and an ejector seat, then barely used it, while its oddly shaped coupe sibling was mocked as a clown shoe.
Development began in 1991 under Burkhard Goschel, with Joji Nagashima shaping the exterior; the design was frozen in 1993. BMW North America unveiled the car by video press release on 12 June 1995, and production started in Greer, South Carolina, that September. Underneath sat a shortened version of the E36 3 Series platform, carrying over the older E30's semi-trailing arm rear suspension to save money. Early roadsters used four-cylinder engines, with straight sixes arriving in 1996, and it became the first mass-produced car in BMW's Z line.
The coupe began as an after-hours project by BMW engineers working in their own time. Sharing the roadster's parts but adding a hatchback rear, it was 2.7 times stiffer and appeared at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show. Critics called its stubby profile a bread van or clown shoe, and Germans nicknamed it the sports shoe. Few were made, especially of the M Coupe, whose facelifted version peaked at 325 horsepower. The M models brought a limited slip differential, bigger brakes shared with the M3 and the M division's first quad exhaust. BMW's engineers even squeezed a 5.4 litre V12 into a single orange prototype in 1999 to test the engine bay; it hit 100 km/h in 5.5 seconds but carried a nose-heavy 70/30 weight split.
The Bond tie-in came from a three-film deal with Eon Productions in which no money changed hands. Two blue prototypes arrived for filming at Leavesden Aerodrome in January 1995. On screen the car had stinger missiles behind the headlights, a parachute brake and a radar display, yet Bond merely drives it in Cuba and swaps it for a plane. Fans were unimpressed, and the next film handed the gadgets real work in a 750iL. A James Bond Edition sold through the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue for 35,000 dollars; demand pushed the planned 20 cars to 100, split evenly between manual and automatic.
Production ended on 28 June 2002, and the Z4 took over.
Source: BMW Z3
