Ian Fleming’s James Bond is famous not just for his skills in taking down baddies or his impeccable taste in suits or drinks, but for his gadgets. The Q Branch gives Bond all sorts of toys to play with, be it a watch with a laser cutter, an explosive pen, an RPG-firing boombox, or a hookah pipe that doubles as a machine gun. Bond gets to play with tricked-out cars too, including an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish with all sorts of guns, adaptive camouflage, thermal imaging, retractable tire spikes, and the famous ejector seat.
Jason, who has been sending cheery messages from a hospital bed, wrote a Cold Start where he envisioned a low-rent, Wish.com version of James Bond. The poor guy isn’t driving Britain’s best, and as it turns out, the Q Branch even forgot to install the pop-off roof panel required for the ejector seat to, you know, eject. Oh dear.
Our readers imagined even worse nightmares for Bond, James Bond. From Minivanlife:
I’d watch that. But to make it more contemporary, I think (fake) Bond would need to first navigate through 5 levels of menu on a touch screen to find the ejector function.
And Mechjaz:
Home -> Driving -> Driving settings -> Customize -> Choose your gear ->
– Machine gun
– Caltrops
– Ejector seat
– PRNDL
And NewBalanceExtraWide:
And when selecting ejector seat, a popup would explain that the subscription to this feature has ended. Would you like to renew your subscription with a new bank card?
Poor discount James Bond (Jimmy Bond?) is going to have a bad time.
For years, the Prius was dragged by the media, but the car didn’t really deserve it. If anything, the Prius was ahead of its time, but so many people didn’t see it back then. David has called for enthusiasts to apologize to the much-maligned machine, and I’m on board. I’ve always loved the unloved myself, so I was one of those people teased for liking cars that weren’t typical enthusiast fare. My high school classmates were ruthless when I told them about the cars I liked, but none of those people are laughing now. I bought my dream cars, enjoy a dreamy career, and more. Totally not a robot sees the Prius as having experienced a similar journey:
The Prius is the nerd that everyone made fun of in school. But now it’s a 30-year-old retiree because it developed an app instead of partying and it just sold that app for a billion dollars.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Oh, there really was a film character named „Jimmy Bondi“ in the European „Love Bug“ rip-off series „Dudu, der Superkäfer“. Just make sure Torch really has fully recovered before you show him, because as a beetle fan, if he has not yet heard about these films, they may be a bit too much for him.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0070280/
Jiminy Bond. He’s anti social, considered about mpg on his Q car more than anything and has a pocket protector but nothing in it.
(Clutch) Slippin’ Jimmy
The Prius gen 2 and 3 lovers are out of the woodwork. Fingers crossed we see some love for gen 4 eventually.
Mmmm. That’s… a hard ask…
I’ve heard it’s the most mechanically reliable generation (albeit the jury is still out on 5th gen…) and if my Prius v were to be totaled or anything, a 4th gen would be on my shortlist of replacement options. Still spacious like the older generations; not the kind of headroom/trunk space compromises of gen 5.
Oh, no doubt. It’s obviously a good and sensible car. It’s just at this point, every major car manufacturer deemed to lose their shit and make everything hideous. The new one is a fine-looking automobile IMO, so Toyota have hopefully moved on from that particular phase. Other manufacturers will, hopefully, follow suit…
I think the new ones look good too; I just think it “betrays” the spirit of the Prius by being faster and less spacious. I wonder if they could have squeezed more fuel economy out of less horsepower.
But, of course, for Toyota’s bottom line, yeah, the right move. Won’t argue that.
Gen 5: Put the rear door handles where they are supposed to be and WTF is with that goofy instrument cluster? After that, take my money.
The rear door handle I understand (even if the existing design might be more aerodynamic?), but what’s wrong with the instrument cluster?
Counterpoint: put the front handles up in the B-pillars like the rear handles are in the C-pillars, and give it a cleaner look. Works for the Mustang Mach-E and Lincoln Continental, among others.
I am curious if the C-pillar handles are remnants of overproduced CH-R parts.
As a gen 2 owner, I’d skip gen 3 and go straight to 4 because of the chronic EGR/head gasket problems that seem to plague the 3rd gens. Gen 4 seems to be pretty reliable, although they’re nowhere near as old as some of the early 2s and 3s so it’s hard to say for sure.
The bummer with the gen 3 EGR problems is not knowing how much they’re overreported–e.g., people who’ve had the issues are going to share the experience far more than people who’ve gotten to 250,000 miles trouble-free.
Because I found many of those reports anecdotally (…after buying my Prius v…) and I did get my EGR preventatively cleaned out once already at a specialist shop, but other than that…I dunno.
But I’d also strongly be inclined to replace my engine if it really came to that. I love this car.
Yeah, I feel like there are too many gen 3s still driving around for it to be anything like inevitable, and with EGR issues I always wonder if driving style is a factor.
Part of it too is that my gen 2 was an experiment to see if I’d like having a greener daily than my truck or Corvette, and I like it so much I drive it way more than I expected. Next time I’ll probably be willing to spend more to get something newer.