Jaguar XF Foiled By Bond in ‘No Time To Die’
If you see a Jaguar on screen in a Bond flick, you can bet it’ll likely get wrecked. But bad guys can have style too!
You don’t have a to be a James Bond super fan to realized that if you see a Jaguar on screen in one of 007’s adventures, it’s probably going to get wrecked. Sure, there are rare exceptions, like Judy Dench’s M being shuttled around in an XJ in Skyfall. But most of the time, Coventry’s handiwork is driven by the bad guys, like the XKR was in Die Another Day, or the C-X75 was in Spectre. So I feel like Jaguar — and Land Rover — should be commended for being such good sports about their machines always being the vehicular villains.
This scene featuring the Jaguar XF was shot on location in southern Italy’s gorgeous city of Matera, which is nestled in a pair of canyons near the Gravina river. Historically, Matera is far more than a pretty place, as it’s suspected to be built on one of the oldest continuously settled plots of land on earth. Additionally, it’s been ruled by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Bourbons, to name just a few cultures. According to Wikipedia, the whole place became such a hazard to residents it was evacuated entirely in the 1952, and actually stood empty until the 1980s.
Now, given the age of some of the streets, there are lots of places in the city which were never designed with cars in mind, and it’s great fun watching a pair of XF sedans bash through the town like a pair of bulls in a china shop. As I’ve written before, the original XF Supercharged was one of the first press cars I ever received, and my best buddy and I took it on a fantastic trip from Portland to Seattle on the famous Highway 101. So I’ll always have something of a soft spot for it. Unfortunately, the current model doesn’t have the grunt that force-fed 5.0-liter V8 did, and now packs a tiny four-cylinder.
That said, there’s only so much power you can use in tight quarters, and the sexy sedans do manage to give 007 a run for his money — at least initially. Check out some behind the scenes footage of the big cats reeking havoc in the clip below, and if you’re a Bond fan, let me know what you thought of No Time To Die. Like a lot of people, I’ve been waiting to see this flick for ages, and am beyond stoked to see how Daniel Craig’s final turn as Ian Fleming’s super spy turns out.
Photos: Jaguar