Let Me Tell You About A Gag I’d Do In A James Bond Parody Movie: Cold Start

I’m still in the hospital, where I got a CT scan at about 1:30 am. Have you ever had one of those? They pump you full of this “contrast” fluid via IV that flows through your veins and feels strangely warm, like you can feel the path of liquid through your vascular system and when it reaches your groin it feels exactly like you peed your pants. So much so they warn you beforehand and remind you that you (probably) didn’t. I don’t think I did but I haven’t really checked. Anyway, I’m waiting for results so I know what kind of surgery they’ll need to do, but in the meantime I was reminded by an old ad for a Bond car – Bond as in the company, not the character – about a gag I had for a Bond car in a Bond movie, this time, both the character, not the company. I’ll explain.

Bond was an interesting carmaker; based in Lancashire, the company primarily built three-wheeled minicars, very cheap, somewhat unstable but usable little machines, and were later bought by the other big British three-wheeler, Reliant. They also made the Bond Bug, upon which Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder was built.

You knew that, right? It’s a fun little detail, the way they turned

But, I’m here to talk about their first four-wheeled car, the Bond Equipe. The Equipe was a Bond, but it was based on a Triumph chassis and drivetrain, and made from mostly Triumph parts.

Bond built Equipes from 1963 to 1970; in 1967 they switched to the Triumph Vitesse chassis with its 2-liter in-line six, just featuring Bond’s sleek fiberglass fastback body. These were handsome, quick cars, and in a way they feel like they fit in the Bond lineup in the same incongruous way the sleek and fast Scimitar fit into the Reliant range of three-wheelers.

The conceit of this brochure seems to be playing on the association of “Bond” with, of course, James Bond, Ian Fleming’s famous spy, known for having Aston Martins crammed full of gadgets, among the most famous of which was the Ejector Seat, which does this:

Handy, right? So, here’s my idea for a Bond parody movie scene involving ejector seats: the basic premise is Bond working for some much lower-budget spy agency, the Wish.com version of MI5 or whatever, and they get him a proper Spy Car with all the gadgets, but they’re sorta half-assed. In the case of the ejector seat, they did manage to develop the seat, but they neglected to develop the other, less appreciated part of the ejector seat equation: the opening roof.

So, I’m imagining a scene where Bond needs to use the ejector seat, so he flips open that gearshift knob, pushes the red button, and we hear the boom and woosh of the seat activating, and then a pause, and then we hear a muffled “OW” from off camera.

The camera turns to show the passenger side of the car, and we see the extended seat, squashing the poor bastard in the passenger seat up against the car’s roof which didn’t pop open, because it was never designed to. They forgot. Or didn’t care.

Maybe the guy’s hand is peeking out between the seat cushion and the headliner, or his squished face, now angrier, yelling at Bond and calling him creatively foul names, like you filthy British slimy bowl of monkey testicles and baked beans, you get me out of here this instant or something like that.

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about before the doctors came in and told me they may need to take a vein from my leg to fix the one in my shoulder? Are they allowed to do that? Can’t we just source some fuel line? Oy.