Warning: SPOILERS for No Time To Die.
At the end of No Time To Die, Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) is driving James Bond's (Daniel Craig) Aston Martin V8 Vantage, and here's why she now owns 007's classic car. In a turn of events even fans wouldn't have seen coming, Bond sacrificed his life for Madeleine and their young daughter Mathilde (Lisa Dorah-Sonnet), in No Time To Die's explosive ending. Craig's final Bond film deals heavily with his relationship with Madeleine and No Time To Die addresses his legacy and what he left behind after his passing.
The cars James Bond drives in No Time To Die also help tell the film's story. In the movie's pre-opening titles action sequence, James and Madeleine ride in his vintage Aston Martin DB5 after they left MI6 together at the end of 2015's Spectre. But Bond leaves his DB5 behind in Italy after he and Madeleine survive a sudden attack by Spectre, which 007 believes was caused by Madeleine betraying him to his archenemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz). Bond left his classic vehicles behind when he retired to Jamaica for five years but upon his return to London, he pulled his Aston Martin V8 Vantage out of storage. He would later drive the V8 to Madeleine's childhood home in Norway, where he discovers he and Swann have a four-year-old daughter.
However, 007 left his Aston Martin V8 at Madeleine's house in Norway when he decided to drive Madeleine's Toyota Land Cruiser to evade the henchmen of the villainous Safin (Rami Malek), likely because the SUV had a car seat and Mathilde was their main consideration. Further, Bond expected they would be gone before Safin's men arrived but, unfortunately, they ran into the villain's caravan en route and the bad guys gave chase, although Madeleine's SUV did help Bond evade Safin's goons thanks to its offroad capabilities. After James Bond's death, Madeleine found his Aston Martin V8 parked at her home where he left it and the car became hers (replacing Madeleine's lost SUV) at the end of No Time To Die.
Bond's Aston Martin V8 Vantage in No Time To Die is identical to the car Timothy Dalton's 007 drove in The Living Daylights. Dalton's gadget-laden V8 was a fighting machine and inherited the onscreen role of the original Aston Martin DB5 Sean Connery's Bond drove in 1964's Goldfinger. If Craig's V8 was the same as Dalton's - and it even had an identical license plate number - then tactically, Bond should have used his own ride to escape Safin's men. However, the V8 Vantage doesn't have the car seat and space necessary for Mathilde, which is likely why Bond and Madeleine opted for her Land Cruiser.
Bond and Madeleine's V8 Vantage also resembles the Aston Martin DBS George Lazenby's 007 drove in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is heavily homaged throughout No Time To Die. On Her Majesty's Secret Service tragically ends with James's ill-fated wedding to Tracy Bond (Diana Rigg), who is murdered by Blofeld (Telly Savalas) and Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) in the final minutes of the film. No Time To Die cleverly flips On Her Majesty's Secret Service's themes so that it's James Bond who chooses to die for love and leaves both Madeleine and Mathilde behind.
No Time To Die's poignant ending sees Madeleine back in Matera, Italy where she is now driving James' Aston Martin V8 Vantage. This time, Mathilde is in the front seat and Madeleine begins telling her "a story" about her father, "a man named Bond... James Bond." While James and Madeleine never married, she is the closest any woman came to becoming his wife in Daniel Craig's Bond movies. Since Mathilde is Bond's daughter, she and her mother symbolically inherit what 007 left behind in the world, although Mathilde is James Bond's true and most important legacy in No Time To Die.