Alvaro M. Rocha's BMW 850 - 007 Edition

Pierce Brosnan flew to Lisbon and there he was around the 24th Feb something (2006), which happens to be my birthday (I was born in 1975, if you care). I ran across his sight in Lisbon's luxurious downtown, at Rua Augusta - he's really taller than I thought, very tall.

We aparently share some tastes, all exquisite: James Bond, great women, great beer and awsome wonderful jaw dropping cars. So syncronicity does seem to have done it's own syncronicity karma thing.

Pierce Brosnan was in Portugal to starr in an ad, a mix of Bond and Thomas Crown with cars, babes and beer to top it all in stylish charm.

Choosing an exotic super car to do super demanding things for the ad ment choosing some "thing" (an artwork exotic on wheels) to withold a lot of stress, but keeping the cool refined gentleman look while flawlessly high performing through it all, and then some.

The ad is actually a series of teasing and progressing ads to SCCB's Sagres Bohemia beer, conceptualized by Euro RSCG (Nuno Caetano oversaw the project) and produced by Ministério (dos) Filmes, directed by Marco Martins. All wonderfully rapped with a "bondish" music score written and conducted (the Slovekian Orchestra) by portuguese maestro Nuno Malo.

Starring Pierce Brosnan (and my BMW 850, 5 liters, 12 cilinders, V12 - modified) inserted in a great team and the result could be none other than absolutely absolutely staggering.

Here's a tiny bit of what this jewel machine had to go through:

Pierce Brosnan uses AMR's BMW 850
Posted by Alvaro M. Rocha




And through an array of choices which, as far as I know, even included Porsches and Ferraris, surprinsingly so or not that much (and I know this from one reliable source only), the 8 series got to be the chosen one, which is so reliable and over-engineered that mine was the only one (super) used.

For undisclosed reasons (security, duh!) at the video ad, one, and one only character of the license plate apearance is altered in the film.

This 850, modified as it is now, in figures (of speech), it eclipses, pulverizes, effortlessly overtakes nearly every vehicle on the road allowing for lightning speed acelerations at average and top legal street and highway speeds (and beyond, of course).

Not to bore those non-petrol heads Brosnan and Sagres fans, here's the full uncut version of one the spots, the "diamons" ad, only transmited in full once, by SIC TV (the normal ad was a bit shorter, but equally impressive):

Sagres Bohemia - "Diamond", 90 seconds, Stereo
Posted by Alvaro M. Rocha

Ad concept by Euro RSCG

(project managed by Nuno Caetano - Euro RSCG)
Produced by Ministério Filmes
Music by Nuno Malo, conducting the Slovekian Symphonic Orchestra

Directed by Marco Martins

And now back to the petrol heads metaforical numbers about this BMW 850:

In case you do "kick-down" the pedal to the metal (actually a luxurious carpet floor), which there's no need for but kick it for the rush - and a scary devastating massive tidelwave of endless power will surface imediatly after what appears to be less than a rather intimidating milisecond of an atractive "wobble" mechanical effect and an almost liquid silky beautiful sound.

In a timeless instant the car gets positioned and prepares to take-off (reduces gear, increases rpm, shoots away - thus all is a moment you can't quantify) and "then" (read "while"), like a feline ready to attack, it instantaneously feels like if the hands of gods are pushing it! It imediatly spurs into hyperspace leaving you at one with your seat (wondering where all the cars in the rearview mirror have gone to), while you and the car become one with the universe, or with crossing it, to be more acurate. Remember to breath.

It (even) seats four people (people in the back will feel a "bit" cramped if over 1.60 meters with a tall driver like me), plus it witholds lot of luggage, all transported in full top-notch Rolls -Royce type of luxurious refined confort doing averages of nine to twelve liters of gasoline per 100 km, thus at an agile steady highway cruising pace.

Thirsty, but not as much as one would expect.

Smooth and slick, it indeed does stops traffic, turns heads and offers a beatifull woman at the passenger seat as a free accessorie, make that a possible and quite lickely three. Even 15 years later. As timeless as a Lamborghini Countach in design and gutural animal appeal. It will never look dated - quote me on that, and test it for yourself.

So the question surfaces: Price?
It's priceless.


It gives you, like all 8 series, a sense of uniqueness and pleisure of ownership and driving. It's not as stressfull to circulate in as with a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, nor as numbing as it can be with a normal Porsche, a top Mercedes or a top... BMW.

It's just rewarding without being demanding, altough it drools on it's own exclusivity, thus among other little excentric bits which only makes it even more special and unique (like maintenance price, which easilly gets to be over 10 000$ US per year, not counting gas, insurance or taxes).

And before you say the BMW's M3 or M5 are also really fast, if not faster (they are a bit faster than a normal 8 series, or even the flagship 850 CSi in some/most circumstances, but this 8, mine, in particular, is - very heavily though invisibly (chips and fries) - tuned), allow me to quote a wise sentence: "you don't see traffic ahead of you pulling out of the lane when you are in one of them "M's" as you do if you are in an 8 series". Or better yet, slowing down to "see" you, if you are cruising in granny type speeds... Respect!

In short:

The magical (and relatively very rare) 8 series from BMW, and particularly mine, pardon my rather understandable petulance, which had Pierce Brosnan, Commander "James Bond" - MI6 Agent 007, the real deal, sitting in my driver's (confortable and sporty) seat, where I seat, and even charmingly retouching the rearview eletrocromatic mirror in the ad, this and much much more makes every second with this 850 feel as if everything is part of a glamourous box office (hit) spectacular, misterious, exotic and enchanting movie. That makes it even more exclusively:

Priceless.

Kind Regards,
AMR

http://www.alvaromrocha.com/

PS - I heard Pierce Brosnan was actually caught speeding in his own BMW 850 (he owns one too, obviously).