Competition between a Mercedes and a BMW

 Competition between a Mercedes and a BMW

I know that the BMW was custom-built, besides being souped-up and armed to the teeth; I would tend to believe that the Mercedes was bought off a show room floor, and no gadgets. So, the competition was unfair.

But for a James Bond aficionado (yours truly), any time a Bond movie is shown on TV, that is manna from Heaven! And, it is a particular item from one Bond’s movies−Tomorrow Never Dies−that is the subject matter of this post. 

In a scene that one enjoys merely for the unfettered imagination (not quite, and I will come to it a little later) of the script and dialogue writers, the BMW is being chased on the up ramp in a multi-storied car-park by a Mercedes Benz. Herein lay the competition, as at the end of it, both are totalled!

At the roof, Bond gets out of the running car, and it goes over the fortified parapet wall to crash into an AVIS Rent-a-car (“We try harder!”, about 50 years ago, as they were not as big as Hertz) business on the street. There was no Hertz (then, the number one) car rental anywhere on the screen! So, AVIS too must have paid the producers of the movie handsomely.

But, what you subsequently see is that the chasing car, the Mercedes Benz, just cannot negotiate the jump (perhaps because, it was not being driven remotely! There were people inside, but that never bothered James Bond ever), is just left hanging five levels above the street.

Daimler Benz may have thought that the asking price (for this on-screen advert) was too much, but for the company that makes BMW vehicles it was an opportunity of a lifetime, one that would make their collars stand up with pride; not an opportunity to let go, no matter the cost!

What I learned from the above is that writing scripts and dialogues for movies are never far from opportunities to make more money! 

Raghuram Ekambaram