#RogerMoore

You’ll have to forgive this author. It’s hard to see your heroes die, and today brought yet another sad moment, another painful departure of a silver screen idol. Roger Moore — Sir Roger Moore, to be exact — has died at the age of 89.

As an admittedly Bond-obsessed youth, a great childhood moment was walking up and touching the white submersible Lotus Esprit from the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me at a car show. The signs said no touching, but screw that. I wanted to touch a car Roger Moore touched.

Roger Moore was my hero. With honorable mentions to Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood, no one was cooler. The man’s British wit, even if it came in the form of a lewd or eye-rolling one-liner, made a lasting impact. And what a dresser. But it was the addition of very cool cars to Moore’s combination of suave confidence and self-deprecating humility that made the man so iconic.

For a man once quoted as saying, “My acting range? Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised,” Moore was allowed no shortage of fun behind the wheel. Let’s enjoy some of those moments.

American car ads of the early 1980s came up short in several departments: Burning rubber, jet-engine-grade turbocharger sound, and blatantly sped-up film that made the cars appear to be going 300 MPH. Oh, and they also lacked James Bond!