Try to imagine the scene. It’s a billionaire’s gleaming ice palace deep in subarctic Iceland. He’s found a new way to use diamonds to provide sunlight for darkened places to help them grow plants year-round (or so he says). He’s invited the most important people in the world. Business leaders, politicians, the media, and a few spies are on hand for a demonstration.
What do all of these elites drive? Ford products. Range Rovers. Jaguars. Volvos. Aston Martins. At least one Thunderbird. A whole crap ton of Lincolns.
Actually, you don’t have to try very hard to imagine it because you can just rent a copy of the James Bond film Die Another Day and you’ll see for yourself. All these products were a part of the short-lived Premiere Automotive Group, or PAG, an experiment by Ford’s then-CEO Jacques Nasser to unite a bunch of luxury brands under one Ford-owned company.
If viewed only through the lens of the parts-bin Jaguar X-Type, Ford’s brief experiment in creating a spinoff luxury automaker wasn’t particularly successful and its eventual dismantling was a good thing. Looking at the film, however, is a reminder of how many great cars were made during the era.
Die Another Day Is A Ridiculous Film With Equally Ridiculous Cars
Thinking about the universe portrayed in Die Another Day where the world’s superpowers only drives Ford Premier Automotive Group cars pic.twitter.com/cwHeXQ6leM
— Landau Calrissian (@DaftRyosuke) September 22, 2024
I must credit the excellently named Landau Calrissian on Twitter/X for pointing out the “universe portrayed in Die Another Day where the world’s superpowers only drives Ford Premier Automotive Group cars.”
It sounds like insane product placement, and to some degree, it is (more on that in a minute), but it’s not entirely unreasonable as a universe. Ford PAG came into existence almost exactly 25 years ago and eventually included Lincoln, Mercury, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar, and Volvo.
Range Rovers are popular vehicles for world leaders, as are Volvos, Lincolns, and Jaguars. Would a world leader show up in a Land Rover Freelander as depicted here? Maybe not, but it’s fun to think about. The Volvo 850 wagons and Volvo S60 are sensible choices by, presumably, sensible politicians from Nordic countries.
Here in the United States, leaders tend to choose Cadillacs, but Lincolns are also associated with state vehicles. How a dozen Lincoln Town Car limos ended up in Iceland is anyone’s guess, but if you’re making space lasers out of conflict diamonds I guess vehicle importation isn’t that much of a stretch.
The J. Mays T-Bird is definitely the outlier in the group, but that doesn’t belong to a world leader. It’s the vehicle of choice for Halle Berry’s Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson, an NSA agent who just happens to love Thunderbirds. She’s paired with Bond, who drives a Vanquish, in a fight against a North Korean Agent who drives a Jaguar XKR (these cars are covered in my James Bond story from earlier this month).
It’s not a great movie. As the Wall Street Journal‘s film critic explained at the time: “James Bond gets bad news in “Die Another Day”: They’ve rescinded his license to kill. The news is worse for us. They’ve given him license to bore.” That’s rough, and only partially accurate, as both Rosamond Pike and Halle Berry are fun to watch.
It wasn’t truly a failure as the film netted $430 million, making it the highest-grossing Bond film at the time. Surely the movie was helped by almost $100 million in co-promotion from companies like the Ford Motor Company.
They Spent How Much?
One of the ways large movies make more money is by using product placement to cover some of their promotional costs. Sometimes this can be a company paying to be in a film, but just as often the company agrees to spend a certain amount of money on co-branded marketing to get people into theaters.
In the case of Die Another Day, various brands spent $100 million in product placement-related marketing. The biggest chunk of that came from Ford and PAG, at a reported $37 million. Why would Ford do this?
According to long-time PR man Simon Sproule, who was VP of Comms at Jaguar Land Rover at the time, the impetus was CEO Jacques Nasser, who wasn’t happy to see Bond driving BMWs in the prior three films. With a new Vanquish coming, Nasser saw the opportunity and personally negotiated with Barbara Brocolli, the producer whose family runs Eon productions and guards the Bond legacy, to pass an Aston to Bond.
Of course, $37 million is a lot of money for Aston Martin.
“Much to the chagrin of those at Ford Motor Company, it was their marketing budget that carried the single biggest load for that ad spend and they weren’t happy about it,” said Sproule. “Aston Martin didn’t have any money, so they got a free ride.”
Did Aston Martin sell a lot more cars because of the movie? I don’t know. I do know that Aston Martin went from a company selling hundreds of cars a year to one selling thousands, which isn’t a bad sign. Plus, without this move, it’s possible we’d have been deprived of Daniel Craig in an Aston Martin (and a Ford Mondeo) in the excellent Casino Royale.
Hot Take: PAG Was Good
PAG was disassembled in chunks, with Lincoln and Mercury being removed in 2002, and Ford eventually selling Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover, and Volvo between 2006 and 2008 as CEO Alan Mulally tried to horde cash ahead of an impending financial crisis.
That was probably the smart move given that Ford avoided bankruptcy and those brands have, to varying degrees, gone on to be successful on their own. In the imagination of Very Online Car People, it seems like parts-sharing projects like the ill-fated Jaguar X-Type are what people remember of PAG. This isn’t entirely unfair as PAG was a “parts-sharing bonanza,” as Road & Track called it.
I think that’s a little oversimplified, however. There were many truly great and/or important cars built during that period.
“In defense of PAG, it was what Volkswagen did,” said Sproule. “The grouping of luxury brands was arguably started by VW and Jacques saw that and put together a pretty complimentary set. I’ve probably drunk too much Kool-Aid at this point, but if you look at the cars you had something for everybody.”
A quick look back and there are, indeed, many great cars running the spectrum of what you might like. Just looking at the Die Another Day parking lot there’s the L322 Range Rover, which was engineered in large part by BMW during the company’s brief ownership of Land Rover. Ford would go on to stuff some Jaguar V8s underhood, making these fast and fun 4x4s.
Volvos of this era are also great. Thomas mentioned recently the success of the V8-powered Volvo S80 and I’m partial to the early Volvo C30, which was jointly developed with Mazda and Ford and built on a platform shared with the contemporary Mazda3 and Ford Focus. These are gorgeous and quick little hatchbacks. They’re also one of the best examples of parts bin key-swapping working out for all partners involved.
Our own Stephen Walter Gossin is a huge fan and collector of PAG-vintage Jaguar XK8s and for good reason. These are still gorgeous cars in pre- or post-facelift guise. Ian Callum knew what he was doing.
“PAG cars are now starting to fit squarely into the criteria that draw me to cars: cheap, broken, and a little bit out of the mainstream,” Gossin told me.
He even likes the X-Type.
“I’m now on my second sub-$1K X-Type (since those cars have been broken and dotting every Craigslist across the land for years now), and have really started to appreciate a car that had faced criticism nearly its entire existence. V6, leather, moonroof, AWD and Ford parts make them a truly outstanding cheap buy in my book. Yes, there are a few strange engineering decisions here and there, but for the most part, it’s one of the best “Junior Executive” cars you can buy for the money.”
According to SWG, XKs are “shockingly robust, reliable vehicles.”
Even better in my mind are the DEW98-platform trio of the Jaguar S-Type, Ford Thunderbird, and the Lincoln LS. I think history will be kinder to the T-Bird, but we’re already smitten with the LS. As Thomas wrote:
Overall, the Lincoln LS is a better car than you might expect. It was an intriguing experiment with promising early results, only made possible thanks to the mergers and acquisitions mess that was Ford’s Premier Automotive Group. Without Jaguar bones, it’s possible we could’ve ended up with a Lincoln-badged Contour, or yet another Lincoln-badged Taurus. More importantly, the Lincoln LS showed gumption, for an attempt at an America 5 Series while the legendary E39 was still in production wasn’t for the faint of heart.
You can fault the world leaders in Die Another Day for almost accidentally falling victim to a secret plan by a crazy billionaire with space-themed dreams to help our enemies, but you can’t fault them for their car choices.
Oh my goodness, you’ve posted a C30 in the exact same spec I had (Cosmic White/Java). Mine was a 6 speed manual and I had to travel almost 1000 miles to go get it, as the 6 speeds were relatively hard to find. I cannot stress how underrated those cars were (especially with some bolt ons and a tune).
I say this as someone who doesn’t like Die Another Day: calling it boring is bad criticism.
License to bore probably sounded clever, but it is actually the opposite of the film’s problems – it’s so desperate to hold your attention that it’s throwing everything at the wall. Most of it doesn’t make any sense, everything is loud and bright with too many moving parts – the Goldfinger homage with the laser where everything starts spinning. The editing is erratic, the plot incoherent, and the visual style is a mess.
But it’s not boring, because boring implies that little is happening. Boring is when you’re understimulated. Die Another Day is the opposite of that, it’s all stimulation. I hate the movie, but it’s not boring at all.
It’s very much the era’s Moonraker – good parts here and there, but the overall take home is just silliness.
JFNF
While the DEW cars did fairly well at hitting their target, fact is those Jag bones include the ghost of Lucas with zone computing at its infancy and are objectively a POS in that regard. The hydraulic fan of the earlier models is another nightmare of stupid design as is much of the cooling system. There is a reason the Lincolns and Jags disappeared quickly. The high survival rate of T-birds is due in no small part that most didn’t rack up that many miles, were well cared for, and thus are seen as worth spending money on them. Plus only the 02s didn’t have the updates that addressed at least some of the stupidity. That said a sunny day, top down with the Mrs beside me is worth it.
The Icelandic car scene is wonderfully eclectic – doing through pics from my trip, I’ve got a street parked 1st gen Ford Cortina next to a Dodge Stratus, ZJ’s and WJ’s next to Nissan Micras, random pairs of 2nd gen Chrysler vans, Saab 9-6’s with giant Buick estate wagons and Opel Omegas, so many balloon tire’d trucks, a smattering of old Soviet stuff. I can pretty much guarantee if you want to find a phalanx of Town Car limos, you can find a phalanx of Town Car limos.
All the fords near a fjord
That’s because only a Ford can ford a fjord.
OK, hottish take here: I am a huge James Bond fan, and really like Die Another Day. It takes a while to get rolling, and they never really establish how Bond regains M’s trust so quickly, but the rest of the flick is basically a Roger Moore-style Bond flick, right down to the weird CGI subbing in for the bad backscreen effects.
You have a guy with diamonds on his face driving a Jag convertible loaded with rocket launchers on a frozen lake in Iceland. You have Bond driving an Aston Martin through an ice hotel. You Michael Madsen (Brosnan’s neighbour) showing up for no reason whatsoever! He doesn’t even advance the plot! It’s fun!
Maybe I am an outlier. Maybe there are people out there that thought Spectre was good (spoiler alert: it isn’t). But this is a hill on which I will die…
…another day.
We’re probably about ten years from Die Another Day getting a View To A Kill-type turnaround where it gets appreciated for just how dumb, campy, and occasionally fun it is.
View to a Kill is one of those movies which is a lot more fun on paper than it is to watch.
As much as it’s a bad movie, it’s sort of the antidote to the overly gritty, ultra serious action movies we get now. I like the Daniel Craig movies, but Bond movies are fun when they’re campy. The series became a cultural touchstone with laser evasion, quirky villains, and characters like Pussy Galore. Not perfectly crafted gun fights.
View to a Kill is similarly bonkers.
A View to a Kill is nuts. Christopher WALken…as..a Bond….VILlain…
Then there’s the fact that Roger Moore looks way too old in it.
But…it was fun in its own way. I especially loved the Michelin product placement: car goes in water with normal tires, but when Bond uses the tires for air while underwater, they have GIANT WHITE Michelin logo on them.
I have to watch Moonraker again at some point because I’ve basically forgotten it. Same with Octopussy, but for different reasons.
I’m with you on this one, probably also helped by it being the first Bond film I saw in the cinema. Definitely one of the underrated Bond movies IMO
That movie sucked the big one. Bigly.
Unless Daniel Craig plays Bond, I’m out.
Or bring back Sean Connery.
Daniel Craig’s Bond is dead, so that leaves Connery. I’ll get the shovel!
Or bring back Sean Connery.
Only if he’s also Zed from Zardoz
I picked up the blue XK in the article with 126K on it and a few trim items that need attention for $5K from a guy at a tattoo shop.
He said one of his customers traded it for some ink work (which must’ve been some serious tats, said as a guy with 2 sleeves) and that he was “into Chevy trucks” and wasn’t at all interested in it.
I think it’s one of the prettiest I’ve ever owned out of 145 cars and Im still thanking my lucky stars that I was able to buy it that glorious day. Replacement parts are pretty expensive, but it’s so sexy that it’s a worthwhile trade-off.
Wow! 145 cars and you’re what, about half my age! Kudos!
SWG’s comment, and James Carson’s reply, prove that we are all in the right place.
Thanks James! It’s been a lifelong passion, starting in ’95.
Most of them were way under $1K and almost all of them were broken so it’s not as glorious as the number may seem.
I used to go to public repo/abandoned car auctions and leave with 2-3 per auction.
Cheers bud!
Out of curiosity, how close is the total tab on those 145 cars to the total on the two sleeves?
Ink ain’t cheap, that’s for sure! Neither are Jag repairs though.
Truth. Good ink can’t be found on Craigslist.
“Lincoln, Mercury, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar, and Volvo”
One of these things is not like the others.
If anything it would’ve made sense to bundle Mercury with Mazda and Volvo into a Midprice Auto Group. It would be everything the Edsel planners wanted but never got
– Mazda for the “E-F” target demo, the “young up-and-comers” who want something a bit nicer than the equivalent Ford for not much more outlay (in ’00s terms, the difference between the huge discounts applied to every Ford and Mazda’s much-closer-to-MSRP ATPs).
– Volvo for the “E-M” demo of established upper-middle-class in prime career and kid-raising years.
– And the Mercury Grand Marquis in particular for the Edsel target cohort who had been those young up-and-comers in the late ’50s and were newly-retired by the mid ’00s.
Yeah, but saying your brand is in the “Mid-price Auto Group” is marketing unaliving. You might well call it the “Meh Auto Group.”
The drophead XKR is superb.
I think history will be kinder to the T-Bird
I’ve always thought that too.
B/c it looked retro-ish, people unfairly compared it with the classics (but only some of them…nobody was saying “yeah the ’70s ones were so much better”) and seemingly expected Ford to mass-produce a completely unique car with no shared parts at a Ford price.
For what it was and was intended to be, it was cool. Though personally, the “base” alloy fan wheels looked so much better than the fake chrome spoked ones that seemingly everyone optioned.
I dunno – have you ever seen a Thunderbird at speed with the soft top up?
The roof balloons up to a ridiculous degree.
Not even Mustangs do that.
Yikes – I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a soft top one…seems like many buyers went with the hardtop, to get the full retro, porthole window thing.
All the cars have a soft top, the hard top was included or optional depending on the trim level. So if you see one with a hard top there is a soft top folded up underneath it.
Easy solution, put the top down!
Personally I think those early painted base wheels are the worst of the bunch and the completely flat chrome spokes are only slightly behind them. The later chromes with the groove in the spoke look a little better. My favorite is the later machined face 20 spoke which is what I put on mine.
In my mind, I’m thinking the early flat 7 (?) spoke ones…seemed liked absolutely everyone had them.
A lot of the hate I have seen is the same as what was levied at the Prowler. Beautiful car, wrong powertrain. This was back in the days of 4 speed auto-tragics and no one wanted one in their sports cars. The Prowler and T-Bird both were seen as cosplayers because they had the looks, but not enough to back it up.
Though in the T-bird’s case, it always seemed to me a little misplaced – it was supposed to call to mind the first gen, a personal luxury car, not say that 10th gen Super Coupes. Unlike say the Mercury Marauder, which was supposed to evoke a vintage muscle sedan, so Ford’s mismatching of the engine (or even just the gearing) really hurt there.
Whether misplaced or not, people expected it to compete with the Corvette but with the classic styling, and it didn’t. I get that’s not what Ford was aiming for, but that just shows they misread the market because that’s what people wanted.
What’s really interesting is that was kinda Ford’s thing back then. The initial high revver 4.6 that Ford put in the Mustang in ’96 totally
disappointed buyers after the 5.0’s low end grunt, despite Ford’s constant “but it has the same power” refrain.
Haha back then? Ford continues to honor its legacy of disappointing buyers even now! Just look at all the recalls.
The 3.9L V8’s and 5-speed autos gave the T-Bird’s plenty of pep, especially 03 and later. The transmission did suck though, but I get why Ford went with it.
I always wished that Ford went with yhe 3-valve 4.6 in the T-Bird, and the IRS from the LS/TBird on the Mustangs of the time.