Movies about the likely alcoholic British spy James Bond often feature all sorts of improbable and exciting driving and car stunts, including the first computer-modeled car jump, and that was using an AMC. As far as I know, though, there’s only been one example in a Bond movie – or, I think, pretty much any movie – where a human being actually has a fight with a van.
Of course, it’s not just any human who has a fight with a van: it’s the famous evil villain henchman named Jaws, known for his steel dental work and strangely superhuman-like strength. He seems sort of, slow, though, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jaws actually speak? He’s also the only Bond henchperson to survive one movie (1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me) and show up in another (Moonraker, in 1979).
Actually, it looks like he actually did have one line, in Moonraker, soon after he found a girlfriend and was enjoying champagne a mostly-destroyed space station of some kind:
Anyway, Jaws is a beast, and certainly well-suited for his career in henchpersoning. It’s not clear just why he’s so strangely strong or what orthodontic nightmare led to his peculiar dental appliance, but I do wonder about some of his choices. Which brings us to the famous scene I want to talk about today: Jaws’ fight with a 1970s British Leyland Sherpa 240 van.
The scene is from The Spy Who Loved Me, and involves Roger Moore as James Bond being kind of an unhelpful prick to KGB agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach, no known relation to composer Johann Sebastian Bach or seagull fan-fiction writer Richard Bach) as they both try to escape from an Egyptian construction site in a Telephone Service van, a British Leyland Sherpa 240.
Jaws, of course, doesn’t want them to escape, so he, um, beats up the van:
Â
Jaws’ choices here are definitely peculiar: You’d think he’d try smashing a window or pulling a door open, but instead he seems to just want to hurt the van. Bending back the roof panel could have helped him gain access to the two intelligence workers, sure, but then he’s just peeling off fenders and punching holes in the side panels, seemingly to hurt the van.
The van gets some good licks in, though, backing into Jaws and squishing him up against a wall, but Jaws is quite undeterred and while the van finally escapes, he gets a parting shot in by tearing off one of the rear doors:
The scene both shows the toughness of the Sherpa, in the sense that it does manage to drive off, but also makes it seem sort of flimsy, as the body gets ripped to shreds by a big dude in a dress shirt, suspenders, and slacks.
The Sherpa itself was a good little van, generally, British Leyland’s attempt to compete with Ford’s hugely popular Transit. The problem was BL’s usual problem, that they were broke. So they needed to be clever, and really raid their parts bins to find a way to put together a competitive van on the cheap. According to the best British Leyland online resource, AROnline, the Sherpa included these parts-bin bits:
JU underframe and axles
J4 side panels and roof
Marina 1.8-litre B-Series petrol engine plus an uprated 1.8-litre version of the old 1.5-litre B-series diesel
Austin 3-Litre version of the C-Series gearbox, with an overdrive option
Marina heater unit
Mini exterior door handles
Austin 2200 steering wheel
Instrument nacelle from Marina van… and so on…
As the list suggests, there were even more parts-bin components used, which all saved a lot of time and money compared to having to develop new parts and subsystems. The design of the van was very practical, with minimal consideration given to aesthetics, but it ended up working more likely because of rather than in spite of the lack of styling attempts. It was a bit narrower than the Transit, which helped for navigating narrow streets, but it still had impressive load capacity.
Look at that red gas cap in that picture above, too. I kind of like it!
The Sherpa stuck its engine in front of the front axle, so it’s not really a cabover design, which, while a bit less space-efficient, helped make servicing easier and gave a bit more cabin room.
While it was never as successful as the Transit, the Sherpa remains one of the few vans to get worked over by a Bond villain, and that’s something, at least.