{"id":352331,"date":"2025-12-16T15:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/352331\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T15:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:51:11","slug":"this-bond-movie-has-the-only-scene-in-all-of-cinema-where-a-dude-fights-a-van","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/352331\/","title":{"rendered":"This Bond Movie Has The Only Scene In All Of Cinema Where A Dude Fights A Van"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>. As far as I know, though, there\u2019s only been one example in a Bond movie \u2013 or, I think, pretty much\u00a0any movie \u2013 where a human being actually has a fight with a van.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s not just\u00a0any\u00a0human who has a fight with a van: it\u2019s 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\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever heard Jaws actually speak? He\u2019s also the only Bond henchperson to survive one movie (1977\u2019s\u00a0The Spy Who Loved Me) and show up in another (Moonraker, in 1979).<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

\"Vidframe<\/p>\n

Actually, it looks like he actually\u00a0did\u00a0have one line, in\u00a0Moonraker,\u00a0soon after he found a girlfriend and was enjoying champagne a mostly-destroyed space station of some kind:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Anyway, Jaws is a beast, and certainly well-suited for his career in henchpersoning. It\u2019s not clear just\u00a0why\u00a0he\u2019s 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\u2019 fight with a 1970s British Leyland Sherpa 240 van.<\/p>\n

The scene is from\u00a0The 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<\/a>) as they both try to escape from an Egyptian construction site in a Telephone Service van, a British Leyland Sherpa 240.<\/p>\n

Jaws, of course, doesn\u2019t want them to escape, so he, um, beats up the van:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jaws\u2019 choices here are definitely peculiar: You\u2019d think he\u2019d try smashing a window or pulling a door open, but instead he seems to just want to\u00a0hurt the van. Bending back the roof panel could have helped him gain access to the two intelligence workers, sure, but then he\u2019s just peeling off fenders and punching holes in the side panels, seemingly to hurt the van.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\"Cs<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Cs<\/p>\n

The Sherpa itself was a good little van, generally, British Leyland\u2019s attempt to compete with Ford\u2019s hugely popular Transit. The problem was BL\u2019s 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<\/a>, the Sherpa included these parts-bin bits:<\/p>\n

JU underframe and axles<\/p>\n

J4 side panels and roof<\/p>\n

Marina 1.8-litre\u00a0B-Series\u00a0<\/a>petrol engine plus an uprated 1.8-litre version of the old 1.5-litre B-series diesel<\/p>\n

Austin 3-Litre version of the C-Series gearbox, with an overdrive option<\/p>\n

Marina heater unit<\/p>\n

Mini exterior door handles<\/p>\n

Austin 2200 steering wheel<\/p>\n

Instrument nacelle from Marina van\u2026 and so on\u2026<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Cs<\/p>\n

Look at that red gas cap in that picture above, too. I kind of like it!<\/p>\n

The Sherpa stuck its engine in front of the front axle, so it\u2019s not really a cabover design, which, while a bit less space-efficient, helped make servicing easier and gave a bit more cabin room.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s something, at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Movies about the likely alcoholic British spy James Bond often feature all sorts of improbable and exciting driving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[175364,88,37117,958,206,175365],"class_list":["post-352331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cold-start","tag-entertainment","tag-james-bond","tag-jaws","tag-movies","tag-sherpa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}