- A lucky couple from Long Island bought a $100 storage unit and discovered it contained a unique item: a 1976 Lotus Esprit sports car from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.
- In 2013, Tesla and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk purchased the vehicle at auction for nearly $1 million.
- Musk has said the sports car served as inspiration for the design of his recently unveiled Cybertruck.
A Long Island couple spent about $100 on an unclaimed storage unit in 1989, and stumbled upon a fortune. When they rolled open the door, they found a 1976 Lotus Esprit sports car tucked beneath a pile of blankets.
The couple eventually loaded the car onto a flatbed truck and hauled it home. As they drove, they were bombarded by a barrage of truck drivers commenting on the curious car over CB radio. That's because it wasn’t just any 1976 Lotus Esprit. It was the car featured in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. As any spy-loving cinephile knows, in the film, the retrofitted Esprit is jettisoned off a dock and turns into a submarine, which can fire missiles.
The anonymous couple had no idea what they had purchased—neither had seen a Bond flick before—so they sought the expertise of Ian Fleming Foundation founder Doug Redenius, who later authenticated the vehicle. Their discovery eventually caught the attention of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who grew up watching the films. In 2013, he put an anonymous bid on the car, offering up a cool $997,000 for the aquatic vehicle.
“It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me drive his Lotus Esprit off a pier, press a button and have it transform into a submarine underwater,” Musk told Jalopnik at the time. He also detailed his plans to swap in an electric powertrain and actually turn it into a submarine.
Giorgetto Giugiaro unveiled the famous vehicle at the Turin Motor Show in 1972 and launched it three years later. A Lotus PR manager strategically parked a pre-production model of the vehicle outside of Pinewood Studios, where the movie was being filmed; it immediately caught the eye of Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli.
In addition to the submarine car, Lotus provided two “road cars” and seven fiberglass body shells of the Esprit to the production company, according to Sotheby’s. One was cut in half so both Roger Moore and Barbara Bach could be filmed in their respective seats.
Wet Nellie, as the car is called, was the only one to be fully converted to a submarine for filming. The vehicle was shipped to Florida-based Perry Oceanographic, where it was retrofitted with ballast tanks, four propellers, water-tight batteries and, of course, its famous fins. (It doesn't have wheels and can't functionally drive.) The modifications to the vehicle cost about $100,000 at the time (about $450,000 today).
In true 007 fashion, Wet Nellie came equipped with a smokescreen, front-facing missile launchers, and a mine hatch on the roof. During the underwater sequences, which were filmed in the Bahamas, a retired U.S. Navy Seal decked in full scuba gear was tasked with driving the so-called "wet submarine," according to Sotheby’s.
The submersible Esprit was also equipped with a rear-facing prismatic mirror that had been plucked from an Army tank. A trail of air bubbles seen streaming from the vehicle was created by a supply of Alka-seltzer tablets.
Musk has said that Giorgetto Giugiaro’s design served as inspiration for Tesla’s recently unveiled Cybertruck, which has a similar geometric design. It's no surprise he scooped up the vehicle when it became available.
Source: CNBC
Jennifer Leman is a science journalist and senior features editor at Popular Mechanics, Runner's World, and Bicycling. A graduate of the Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz, her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, Science News and Nature. Her favorite stories illuminate Earth's many wonders and hazards.
