...for England James…
USSR Army Cagiva 600 W16 Motorcycle —GoldenEye (1995)
Escaping a Soviet chemical weapons facility, James Bond finds himself on the facility’s runway. Bond first leaps into a taxiing plane, but the pilot and Bond both manage tumble out as they fight for control. Bond steals a pursuing soldier’s Cagvia 600 W16 motorcycle to pursue the unpiloted aircraft as it lumbers toward the runway’s end at a cliff’s edge. The plane becomes airborn before Bond and the speeding Cagiva can catch it. No matter, Bond hurls the Cagiva off the runway’s end, free-falling with deliberation towards the plane and his one chance at survival.
The freefall scene was borne out of ideas conceived by stuntman and skydiver B.J. Worth, a frequent flier on Bond stunts since Moonraker (1979). It was Worth’s idea to have Bond ride a motorcycle off a cliff in an attempt to catch a plummeting airplane.
The majority of the escape sequence was filmed at the newly converted Leavesden Studios, an abandoned Rolls Royce aircraft factory, which, conveniently came with its own runway. Fake snow and mountains painted on plywood created the illusion of the Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility.
Multiple Cagiva’s were used in the scene for various shots and stunts. Pierce Brosnan rode on one of the Caviga 600 W16’s, but he was safely towed behind a camera vehicle for his shot. Not so safe was the single shot of the Caviga filmed in the Swiss Alps. A small path in the snow and a short flat wooden ramp served for the launching point of Jacques “Zoo” Malnuit riding a soon-to-be-destroyed Cagiva over the edge of the mountain and then free falling in pursuit of a Pilatus Porter flown just a few feet “off the deck.” But after the first take which went smoothly, Zoo wanted a re-take. In the end seven Cagiva bikes went over the edge.
The scene at the Arkangel facility appears to take place in 1986 during the later years of the Soviet era, making the Cagiva 600 W16 somewhat of an anachronism. First, the Soviet Army appears to have relied on the Ukrainian motorcycle manufacturer Dnepr, not the Italian Cagiva brand. As importantly, the 600 W16 went into production only in the early-1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.
One of the surviving, fully functioning Cagiva’s from the Leavesden shoot was donated to the Foundation in 2007.
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