AMC Matador Coupé

Appears In
The Man With The Golden Gun

On Film
The villain Francisco Scaramanga’s 1974 AMC Matador X Coupé enjoys its starring role when intelligence officer Mary Goodnight hides one of Q’s Homer tracking devices in the car’s boot, before she is shoved into the trunk and kidnapped. Scaramanga and his sidekick, Nick Nack, speed off and Bond pursues them with in his commandeered AMC Hornet. After weaving through the Bangkok traffic, the chase sequence concludes when the villains pull into a hangar where the Matador transforms into an airplane. A wing attachment, complete with jet engine, snaps onto the car while an aircraft instrument panel flips down into the dashboard. Bond, who has been collared by the local police, then watches on in frustration as the Matador soars into the sky. Goodnight, meanwhile, gets a shock when she opens the car’s boot to discover that she is airborne. Later, Bond informs M that the car has been discovered, abandoned 200 miles from Bangkok.

The Vehicle
For Scaramanga’s flying car, the filmmakers chose a bronze and black 1974 AMC Matador Brougham Coupé, Oleg Cassini edition – a 2-door fastback with a V8 engine producing 175bhp. It featured a 3-speed automatic powertrain, accelerating 0-60 mph in 10.4 seconds with a quarter-mile time of 17.7 seconds.

• The Production
  The American Motors Company provided a number of different cars to the production, including Bond’s Hornet X and several Matador four-door police cars. Special effects wizard John Stears built full-scale airplane attachments to upgrade Scaramanga’s 1974 AMC Matador. Designed for cosmetic effect only, the non-functioning wings were based on designs for a real-life flying car and when a gust of wind caught the Matador’s wing mount during filming, the car almost took off. The stunt car was 30 feet long with its airplane modification and had a 42-foot wingspan. Stears built a miniature model for use in the flying sequences, which measured one metre and carried models of Nick Nack and Scaramanga.

  Modifications
  • Attachable flying unit – unit comprised of wings, rear spoiler and jet engine slides onto the roof and is secured by struts clipping into brackets on the side panels
  • Aircraft control panel – concealed behind rotating dashboard dials and within a secret compartment above driver’s head