I've been reading the latest issue of Automobile magazine. There is an article on the cars used in the latest James Bond flick. In it, he drives an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish and the bad guys (appropriately) chase him in Jaguar XKR dropheads.

There is a chase scene on ice that was tricky to get right. The cars had to be modified. According to Automobile, "Out went the Vanquish's glorious V-12 engine and paddle-shifted six-speed sequential manual gearbox, and in went a Ford small-block V-8 mated to a three speed automatic. Same for the XKR's supercharged V-8 and five-speed automatic. Four Astons and four Jaguars were modified this way with another three Astons and four Jags serving as "hero" cars for close-up photography."

John Testrake
President, Jaguar Association of Greater St. Louis

Submitted by dthompson@gbc.ca on Tue, 11/26/2002 - 16:50

Actually I saw the movie on Friday night and I thought the car scenes were quite boring. All the action scenes in the movie had a "nintendo" feel to them. I think I would have preferred a scene showing a DB-5 winding its way through the European countryside.

The Vanquish is one beautiful car though. If only I had..... what is it? $300,000?

Daniel
2002 X-type
1968 E-type
1958 MkIX
1952 XK120

Submitted by pascal@jcna.com on Sun, 11/10/2002 - 20:22

yes, apparently they needed AWD to get the stunts done right on the ice and they used the drivetrain from some high performance off road Ford...

Pascal Gademer
72 E-type 2+2
00 XKRCoupe
99 XJR