Allow me to introduce you to Josh Hancock, a man who I was introduced to via e-mail as “the guy who built Austin Powers’ incredible 1967 Jaguar E-Type/XKE that the spy who shagged us drove into the silver screen allllll those years ago.” In reality, he has done so much more, working with some of the greatest filmmakers in history. Here’s his story.
The first thing I did was search Mr. Hancock on the web, where I found his IMDb page, which is legitimately impressive, including notable films like Scorsese’s “Casino,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rainmaker,” and, of course, the Austin Powers’ films.
To say Hancock is just the guy who built the Shaguar would be a gross oversimplification of his multi-decadal career that goes back before my parents even thought about having a lil’ Griffin running around the house.
Eventually, Hancock did what every rational person in the entertain industry does and he packed his bags and left it behind. (No shade to my film industry people, as I was one of you). But leaving production didn’t exactly mean he was going to opt for a conventional career, either, as he found himself becoming the host of History Channel’s “Shifting Gears,” and having a stint in radio too with a handful of outlets.
He’s done a lot, in other words. But let’s talk about one legendary machine of his — one that is going up for auction: The Shaguar.
The Shaguar
During our interview, Hancock pulled out a certificate from the Jaguar Heritage Trust; this is basically a bougie collector CarFax for Jag that confirms when a car was made, the engine number, vehicle number — all that good stuff. If you look closely though, it says something interesting on it: “left-hand drive.”
Weird for a car supposedly from Britain to be left-hand drive right?
“I couldn’t find a [right] hand drive car at the time[…]They were all really crappy,” Hancock told me. To solve this, he bought a lefty from a shop called European Collectibles in Costa Mesa, California, and had the guy swap it over to right-hand drive.
“He had a kit that was authorized factory parts and instructions. The car was made to switch from left-hand to right-hand drive.”
“I had him do it for the movie because the only other car I could find right-hand drive that was decent was in England and we didn’t have the money to get it.”
So with a converted Shaggy Jaggy, his next step was the mechanical work.
“The gauges started having problems… had to do all of that; it’s English,” he said, taking a potshot at the once great Empire. “It took me six months to get parts for brakes, fuel system, just to update. But the car’s great and the car always was great.”
So now he has a cleaned-up, right-hand-drive E-Type painted with the iconic Union Jack, giving birth to …
The almighty Shaguar.
I asked Josh, “Do you have any remorse about vandalizing such a gorgeous machine in such a silly way?” His response?
“I didn’t do anything that was detrimental to the car. I always knew it could be repainted.”
Cars from Other Films: Finding Graceland
Hancock can totally restore the Shaguar. But you know what he can’t (easily) rebuild? This ’59 Cadillac he wrecked while making Finding Graceland.
“I had to make it look like it was hit by a train,” Hancock said. “I took a forklift and I drove the car up and down to scrape the side of it completely.”
John Wick
It seems harsh to annihilate a car like that big-fin Caddy, but CGI was pretty elementary at the time (1998, which is also when I was born. Have I mentioned I’m young?) and practicals often look better anyways. That’s why you have entire films like Chad Stahelski’s “John Wick” series that often commit to practical stunts when they can because they know how well it sells the spectacle. Check it out:
And speaking of John Wick…
“When they put a Charger in the … movie, he used that car in a scene and killed people with the car,” Hancock said. “For the next movie, they had me meet with the director because they wanted a Mustang in the film and they were willing to do a lot to get a Mustang in the film.”
How’d that conversation go?
“You can’t kill people with the car.” Well, that kinda defeats the purpose of it being in a film about the “coolest assassin ever” …
As Hancock describes it, a long conversation with Ford ensued afterwards about how the partnership would work out.
“Sure, you can shoot and kill people! You just can’t hit them with the car.”
Honestly, good PR management from Ford considering their track record at car meets.
So while Ford has the ability to tell people like Chad Stahelski “no” while making John Wick, there are some directors you just can’t tell no. One of those directors is Martin Scorsese.
Casino
Hancock worked on Casino, Martin Scorsese’s 1995 hugely entertaining film about mobsters in 1970s Vegas, but getting him into the production required an intervention from the auter himself. “You know Marty, I have to leave in two weeks […] I’m not in the budget,” Hancock recounted telling Scorsese. (Yes, he calls him “Marty”)
“And he’s like, ‘Budget me? Walk with me,'” According to Josh, Scorsese then led him to the producer’s office and kicked the door in, figuratively speaking. “He’s like, ‘Josh is staying for the film.’ She goes, ‘Oh, whatever you want!'”
In terms of the car work, it was a challenge because the film is what I’m dubbing a shifting-period piece. Period pieces are always tough because you need to clear out everything modern. From modern traffic signs to billboards and (most importantly to us) the cars: it all needs to go and get swapped with something old school to make sense for the piece.
I know how difficult they are from firsthand experience too, having worked on Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” back in ’21 (watch it if you haven’t).
“There were so many principal cars in that movie. Even if there’s going to be a reflection in glass, we’d have to put 40 cars on the street that were period, correct so when I opened up the door, if you saw the reflection, they were correct,” Hancock said.
But on “Casino,” the story was told across four different time periods, meaning they couldn’t just cycle a large handful of cars the way we did on “The Fabelmans.” Instead, they had to get several from across the years, and his solution to sourcing all those cars was honestly pretty smart.
“I hired a bunch of film students who were really gung ho. They were local so they knew people who owned cars,” he said. “We would have these meets at the shopping mall and I would look over 100 cars and pick out the cars.”
The more we talked though, I started to notice a pattern with this villain we call Josh Hancock: he appears to love destroying some beautiful cars, including this old Cadillac Eldorado.
More Destruction to Make You Cry
“We had to take a car, chop it in half. take the engine out, put all the special effects rigs in so that flames come out of the vents.”
And I know what you’re thinking after watching that clip: I just watched Robert De Niro blow up after getting into a car but saw him in a film last year. How’s that possible?!
Well, keen viewers will notice that there was a match cut between De Niro hopping in the car to a replacement mannequin that was set to broil in the car, saving murder charges for the special effects team and saving our darling De Niro from a crispy demise.
Time to land this plane: To start the interview, I asked Hancock his most and least favorite car just to mentally calibrate how much I like this guy after all the nice cars he’s been wrecking. His favorite is a ’69 Bronco Sport because it was one of his first cars. His least favorite? “Probably the Cybertruck.”
There you go. There’s our weekly quota of having to mention either the Cybertruck or Tesla.
You can watch the my full interview with Josh Hancock at the video below, and if you’re made out of money and wanna put your hat in the ring for the iconic Shaguar, you can bid on it at Mecum Auctions in Kissimmee, Florida on Jan. 18th. Thanks for reading.
(Image Credits: Myself, Isaac Hernandez, Mecum Auctions, Inc., Largo Entertainment / TCB Productions. Video Credits: Adhm Nofal and Car Chase Wonderland 2 on YouTube)
What a legend.
Honestly surprised this much real effort was put into a movie car only used in a few quick shots. Good on them.
When I worked on the second Dr. Strange film, I managed a location’s construction for two months as we transformed it from a normal “New York Street” to an intergalactic NYC covered in flowers and with a river flowing in the middle. Two months of work, all the cost in labor and materials, for two days of filming and a whopping: 15 seconds of screen time.
Honestly kind of wild this industry.
There’s a typo on the certificate of authenticity – “Hollywood Vehicle Serivces,” come on now.
That said I just watched the first Austin Powers again this week and it’s a perfect, dumb, perfect movie, and the car is a gem.
Cinema Vehicle Services was the correct company
The frightening thing is we are now almost 30 years in the future from 1997. How in the hell did that happen? I remember seeing that in the theatre like it was yesterday.
I remember seeing an ad in 2015 for a 30yr Back to the Future screening and just feeling old. 1985 is now 40 years in the past, 1955 was only 30 years gone when the movie was made.
Interesting little tidbit about period movies, given the number of times some movies get it “wrong” by a few years. Case in point, ‘Goodfellas’– there is one scene in which there is a caption that says the scene is near ‘Idlewild Airport, 1962’, but there is a ’65 Chevy in the center of the camera shot! And the recent movie ‘A Complete Unknown’, there is a Dodge A-100 van in a scene that takes place in 1963…the A-100 debuted as a
’65.
Oh, and the studio must’ve built more than one Shaguar– Ford dealer Sam Pack has one in his collection, north of Dallas, Texas.
There is only one 1967 Jaguar XKE “Shaguar.” But there were two movie XK8’s painted with the Union Jack that we prepared and used in the opening of the third film. Tom Cruise appeared in the film and briefly drove that car. Since that time there are have numerous copies of that car made. There are several in Texas.
“Well, keen viewers will notice that there was a match cut between De Niro hopping in the car to a replacement mannequin that was set to broil in the car, saving murder charges for the special effects team and saving our darling De Niro from a crispy demise.”
Well, keen viewers will notice that DeNiro’s character – who was based on the real Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal – survived the bombing.
How did Rosenthal come out of such an ordeal alive?
Well, a metal stabilization plate located underneath the Eldorado’s driver’s seat saved his ass… literally.
So there’s that.
at first i was thinking .. a mustang would not be a good fit for john wick. but they did not specify what year so maybe a fastback fox body or a 1971 mach 1 in black would be a good fit for john wick. Honestly way to go ford for not letting John wick cars and coffee people on the big screen. With all the mustang fatalities that would not have been a good look.
IIRC it was his ’69 Boss 429 that was stolen from him in the first film.
And they killed his puppy.
I just stumbled into this on YouTube and it is excellent.
Thanks for putting this together.
Thanks for the watch and read!
Is it me, or did there really seem to be a small trend in the ’80s and ’90s to really beat the crap out of ’59 Cadillacs – Wise Guys (although they swapped it for a ’60 stunt double for the real bad stuff), Fandango, Pink Cadillac, Finding Graceland.
Tin Men gets a pass, because they only beat up early ’60s Caddies that were playing themselves.
3000 Miles to Graceland kept that trend going till 2001. And really, I feel like it could extend the other direction to the late 70’s with Deer Hunter. Those cars have always had amazing presence, and were surprisingly cheap back in the day. I remember my college roommate’s uncle picking up a near-mint low-mile ’59 Fleetwood for only $5,000 in ’94. In 2001, I bought a fairly decent running and driving ’59 Series 62 bubble-top sedan for only $2,850.
I just saw a ’59 Coupe deVille for sale on FB the other day. Asking price: $49K. Times have certainly changed.
In the early 90s my brother and I owned a ’59 Series 62 Cadillac 4-door bubble top (see profile photo). It was cool as hell, but the folks at car shows looked down their noses at us. “The only good use for a four door is to chop off the back and make a sofa out or it” said one guy. A few years later my brother sold it because it was not reliable, and he needed room for a ’60 convertible. I often wonder what happened to it and if it is still on the road.
The sofa hounds! Those guys were the worst. I had an interesting discussion with some dude on eBay I was bidding against for a pair of ’59 Caddy sedans in the early 2000s (I think he had bid on something I had for sale in order to get my phone number, and we were the only two bidding on the cars – I’m sure this was against any sort of official eBay policy). At one point he said “If you beat me, do the right thing and get at least the good one back on the road. And don’t let the damn sofa hounds get their hands on the other – the body is too nice!” He ended up winning the auction and let me know if I needed any parts to give him a call. I should have checked in periodically, he sounded like quite character.
The now-departed guy who built the Dumb and Dumber short bus also built my race car roll cage. How is that for a brush with automotive royalty?
Way to flex on us, Chronometric!!!
Some of my competitors would argue that both vehicles had the same purpose.