Corgi Toys CC04904 Goldeneye BMW Z3 > Reviews (1)

When it come to merchandise linked to films or TV shows the quality of an item that is mass produced can drop considerably, with the vehicles released by Corgi as part of the James Bond Range you know straight away that the vehicles themselves have good presentation and most importantly are accurate to what was seen in the film. Goldeneye was released in 1995 and marked the return of the Bond movies after a six year absence, in reality which was due to a legal wrangling over the rights of the films themselves. However the film itself was the first appearance with Pierce Brosnan as 007. As a move away from the normal brand of vehicles Bond drove a BMW Z3, controversial at the time and to be honest it doesn’t get used much in the film at all except top be seen in Q’s lab and driven down a road when Bond is in Cuba.

However it is part of the Corgi collection, and I have to say that I am impressed with the details of the vehicle itself as the attention to detail is high and quite impressive to say the least. By this I mean the accuracy of the vehicle. The body paint colour of a rather fetching pale blue that borders a light grey is absolutely spot on as is the dimensions of the BMW itself and the replication of the angles of the easily recognisable BMW given the badge on the front has been applied in very good detail without any splashing of paint into the surrounding edges. Also in the early Corgi releases of this vehicle the car didn’t have any passengers and was just simply a car with no driver and empty setas, and in the newly released or updated Directors Cut series two figures have been included in the car, James Bond and Natalia Simonova, both replicated in the correct manner that they were both dressed in the scenes that they travelled in the BMW in the single scene the vehicle was used so in some ways this is a far superior 1:36 scale vehicle with Bond in his sharp white shirt and suit with his companion in a red dress. Nice to see and shows the effort made yet due to the scale neither of the figures actually don’t resemble the actors at all and look more like Ken and Barbie in a two-seater car open top car and you cant remove them from the vehicle so they are fixed there like a pair of crash test dummies! They are captured in a pose as well with Bond’s hands on the bottom of the steering wheel driving and the Bond girl in a pose that doesn’t make her look completely static. The headlights are stickers and don’t really look that convincing at all, yet this is a minor thing as I wouldn’t expect anything that immaculate on a model of this size. There I a splash of colour on the inside as well with the headrests and the sterring wheel just giving a nice break from the beige interior.

Annoyingly it’s also a left hand drive as well… not very British!

It does have additional features as you can fire missiles from behind the headlights as was described in the film, yet I haven’t actually taken this out the box since I bought it from Modelzone as I prefer to collect these and eventually put them all on display once I have a decent glass unit to present them with.

Until then the box goes on a shelf, this isn’t a normal everyday toy that a kid can play with as the quality of the car itself is impressive and the last thing any collector would want is to have this car chipped and dented, one thing that you do notice is that the tread on the wheels and the spokes on the alloys. This is by far the brightest and shiniest part of the vehicle and something that shows the vehicle off very well.

Overall this is a good addition. Corgi has upped their game with the Directors Cut series and for a vehicle that was underused in the film has delivered an impressive model that shows the vehicle to a very high standard. As I said earlier this is a 1:36 scale model of the actual car and so the model is only 4.25 inches long and 2 inches wide. The presentation of the model in the packaging instantly connects this to the Pierce Brosnan era as he is shown on the box with the insignia of the film next to him. On the back of the box is a quite informative breakdown of the films story and the use of the vehicle in the story.