Unlike our more hipsterish brothers over at NZ Performance Car, elderly classic car editors don’t often get to the movies. So you’ll have to forgive us for mentioning a movie that, although it came out a few years back, we only just saw for the first time a few days ago — Red 2. Well, actually, we really only watched the bit with the Lotus Exige S. And while the subsequent car chase was very good — taking full advantage of the Exige’s compact size to duck under barriers, dive between the axles of a container truck, and allow a spot of seriously cool drive-by gunplay — what really caught our attention was the scene where Dame Helen Mirren actually swept aboard the Lotus.
If you’ve ever crawled into the cramped cabin of an Exige — as we at New Zealand Classic Car have many times — you’ll instantly be aware that a spot of ‘movie magic’ was quite obviously involved during the filming of the aforementioned scene.
Our seasoned editor is almost 10 years younger than Helen Mirren — who was knocking on the door of 70 when she appeared in Red 2 — but he struggles to cram himself into an Exige with any degree of dignity, as can be seen in our photograph (an image that also explains why he rarely, if ever, puts the hood up on the editorial Elise).
Photo: sourced
Alright, Helen Mirren does appear to be rather better preserved than our editor (not to mention a whole lot better looking), but are we really expected to believe that an over-aged pensioner film star can demonstrate the flexibility of a teenager by diving into the cockpit of an Exige with such remarkable split-second speed?!
Ah, if only we could all utilize jump cuts to cover up those awkward, real-life moments!
