Imagine the scene. It’s a billionaire’s sparkling ice palace deep in subarctic Iceland. He has found a new way to use diamonds to provide sunlight into dark places and help grow plants all year round (he says). He invited the most important people in the world. Business leaders, politicians, the media, and a few spies are participating in the demonstrations.
What are these elites promoting? Ford products. Range rover. Jaguar. Volvo. Aston Martins. At least one thunderbird. That’s a lot of Lincoln.
In fact, you don’t have to imagine it too hard, as you’ll know right away when you rent the James Bond movie Die Another Day. All these products were created by Premier Automotive Group (PAG), a short-lived experiment by Ford’s then-CEO Jacques Nasser to consolidate numerous luxury brands under one Ford-owned company. It was part of.
Viewed solely through the lens of the parts bin Jaguar X-Type, Ford’s short-lived experiment in creating a spin-off luxury automaker was not particularly successful, and it was a good thing it was eventually dismantled. But watching this movie is a reminder of just how many great cars were made during this era.
Die Another Day is a ridiculous movie with similarly ridiculous cars.
Think about the universe depicted in “Die Another Day” where the world’s superpowers drive only Ford Premier Automotive Group cars pic.twitter.com/cwHeXQ6leM
— Randor Calrissian (@DaftRyosuke) September 22, 2024
I have to give credit to the wonderfully named Landor Calrissian who pointed out on Twitter/X that “the world depicted in ‘Die Another Day’ where the world’s superpowers drive only Ford Premier Automotive Group cars” .
This sounds like insane product placement, and to some extent it is (more on that later), but it’s not entirely unreasonable in the world at large. Ford PAG was born almost exactly 25 years ago and eventually included Lincoln, Mercury, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar and Volvo.
Range Rover is a popular car among world leaders, along with Volvo, Lincoln, and Jaguar. Will a world leader emerge in a Land Rover Freelander like the one pictured here? Maybe not, but it’s fun to think about. The Volvo 850 wagon and the Volvo S60 are probably smart choices by smart politicians in the Nordic countries.
Here in the United States, leaders tend to choose Cadillacs, but Lincoln is also associated with the state car. How a dozen or so Lincoln Town Car limousines ended up in Iceland is anyone’s guess, but if you’re going to make space lasers out of conflict diamonds, I guess importing the vehicles isn’t that far-fetched. .
J. Mays’ T-Bird is definitely an outlier in this group, but it’s not one of the world leaders. This is the vehicle of choice for Jacinta “Jinx” Johnson, played by Halle Berry, who happens to be an NSA employee who loves Thunderbirds. She’ll be paired with Bond, who drives a Vanquish, in a battle against North Korean agents who drive a Jaguar XKR (we covered these cars in our James Bond article earlier this month).
It’s not a great movie. As a Wall Street Journal film critic explained at the time: “James Bond gets bad news in ‘Die Another Day.’ They’ve taken away his license to kill.” The news is even worse for us. They gave him permission to drill holes. ” This is a rough and only partially accurate statement, as both Rosamond Pike and Halle Berry are fun to watch.
The film grossed $430 million, making it the highest-grossing Bond film at the time, so it wasn’t really a failure. Indeed, the film was helped by nearly $100 million in co-promotion from companies such as Ford Motor Company.
How much did they spend?
One way for blockbuster movies to make more money is to use product placement to cover some of their promotional costs. Sometimes companies pay for movie appearances, but just as often they agree 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 on product placement-related marketing. The largest portion of this came from Ford and PAG, reportedly at $37 million. Why would Ford do this?
According to Simon Sproule, Jaguar Land Rover’s vice-president of public relations at the time and a long-time public relations officer, the impetus was CEO Jacques Nasser, who made Bond drive a BMW in the previous three films. He said he was not happy to see it. With the arrival of the new Vanquish, Mr. Nassar saw an opportunity and personally negotiated with producer Barbara Broccoli, whose family owns Eon Productions and is the guardian of Bond’s legacy, to give the Aston to Bond. We negotiated.
Of course, $37 million is a lot of money for Aston Martin.
“To the great chagrin of Ford Motor Company officials, the single biggest burden on their advertising budget was their marketing budget, and they weren’t happy with that,” Sproul said. said. “I didn’t have any money for an Aston Martin, so they gave me a free ride.”
Did Aston Martin sell more cars because of this movie? I don’t know. I know Aston Martin has gone from a company that sells hundreds of cars a year to one that sells thousands of cars a year, and that’s not a bad sign. Moreover, without this move, we might have been robbed of Aston Martin (and Ford Mondeo) Daniel Craig in the great Casino Royale.
Hot Take: PAG was good.
PAG was fragmented in 2002, with the removal of Lincoln and Mercury, and Ford ultimately sold Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover, and Volvo between 2006 and 2008, a move that CEO Alan Mulally announced was imminent. This was because they were trying to save cash ahead of the financial crisis.
This was probably a wise move, given that Ford avoided bankruptcy and those brands have enjoyed varying degrees of success in their own right. In Very Online Car People’s imagination, what people remember about PAG is as a parts-sharing project like the ill-fated Jaguar X-Type. This isn’t entirely unfair, since PAG was what Road & Track calls a “parts sharing bonanza.”
But I think that’s a bit of an oversimplification. Many truly great and important cars were made during this era.
“In defense of PAG, that’s what Volkswagen did,” Sproul said. “The grouping of luxury brands was probably started by Volkswagen, and Jack saw that and put together a pretty complementary set. I think we’ve probably drunk too much Kool-Aid at this point, but when you look at the cars, everyone should have provided something.”
If you take a quick look back, there are certainly a lot of great cars in the range that you might like. If you look in the parking lot for Die Another Day, you’ll see an L322 Range Rover. It was largely designed by BMW during the company’s brief ownership of Land Rover. Ford then stuffed some Jaguar V8 bodywork into it and created a fast and fun 4×4.
Volvos from this era are also great. Thomas recently mentioned the success of the V8-powered Volvo S80, but I’m referring to the early Volvos, which were jointly developed with Mazda and Ford and built on a platform shared with the modern Mazda 3 and Ford Focus. I love my C30. These are gorgeous, fast little hatchbacks. These are also some of the best examples of parts bin rekeying working well 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, pre- or post-facelift. Ian Cullum knew what he was doing.
“PAG cars are now starting to fit the criteria that I’m drawn to in cars: cheap, broken, and a little outside the mainstream,” Gossin told me.
He also likes type X.
“I’m currently on my second sub-$1,000 X-Type (because these cars have been broken down for years and dotted around Craigslist all over the world), and I’m so excited for their existence. I’m starting to really appreciate a car that’s been criticized almost the entire way, V6, leather, moonroof, AWD, Ford parts, and yes, it’s a really outstanding cheap buy in places. There are engineering decisions, but for the most part it’s one of the best “junior executive” cars money can buy. ”
According to SWG, the XK is an “incredibly robust and reliable vehicle.”
Even better in my mind is the DEW98 platform trio of the Jaguar S-Type, Ford Thunderbird, and Lincoln LS. I think history will be kinder to the T-Bird, but we’re already obsessed with the LS. Thomas writes:
Overall, the Lincoln LS is a better car than I expected. It was an interesting experiment with early promising results, made possible only thanks to the merger and acquisition turmoil by Ford’s Premier Automotive Group. Without the Jaguar bones, it could have been a Contour with a Lincoln badge, or a Taurus with yet another Lincoln badge. More importantly, the Lincoln LS showed courage. Taking on the American 5 Series while the legendary E39 was still in production was not for the faint of heart.
You can’t blame the world leaders in Die Another Day for nearly falling victim to a secret plan by a crazy billionaire with space-themed dreams to help his enemies. You can, but you can’t blame them for their car choices.
