Movie stunt cars are the unsung heroes with many of them being used for stunts and few surviving. For the James Bond film Spectre where there was a dramatic chase, the Jaguar C-X75 was used, and amongst the five stunt cars used, only four survived while now one is road legal. Originally created by the Jaguar Design team, led by Ian Callum in 2010, the Jaguar C-X75 was part of the 007’s action sequences filmed in the Vatican City while now one such car has been extensively modified for road use by Callum, a new design and engineering company started by Ian Callum himself. The C-X75 was a supercar made by Jaguar and its shape is still recognised to be one of the most beautiful but it never saw the light of the day as a production supercar.
Now one car has been prepped for road use by Callum engineers. The original stunt cars were built by Williams Advanced Engineering for the 2015 film. Those cars had a tubular spaceframe chassis with rally-derived suspension and Jaguar’s 5.0 liter, supercharged V8 engine.
Now, a private customer commissioned Callum to make one road worthy. To be worthy for road use, the car had to be modified in many ways. Some of the changes were E-marked glass, switchgear, a quieter exhaust, and catalytic converters along with associated engine calibration tuning. Other changes were new wing mirrors with integrated side repeaters to replace the foam models used on the stunt car.
This was not all as some bodywork changes and quality changes were also done including a better finish to the carbon fiber, reduced panel gaps, and more. Not much change was done in terms of the powertrain or the dynamics but Callum engineers did adjust the dampers plus the ride height- suitable for road use. We do not know how much it cost to put this svelte Jaguar supercar on the road but is surely a significant amount looking at the changes that had to be done.
The Spectre is arguably one of the best James Bond movies and the chase scene was integral to it as well including the memorable line-up of cars being featured. The chase scene was a whole 6-minute scene filmed at night with James Bond driving the Aston Martin DB10 and the Jaguar C-X75 being driven by Hind. Stunt cars live a difficult life and only a few of them survive along with withstanding a lot of hard use. The design of the C-X75 though is inspired by the voluptuous supercars of yesteryear which Jaguar also built including the XJ220. While we do wish that Jaguar made this supercar a reality, the fact that one has now and is now roadworthy is indeed great news for enthusiasts!
