This 1976 Lotus Esprit can still go underwater.
It’s the Storage Wars dream scenario: You buy a storage unit, sight unseen, for $100, and some rich guy, in this case Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk, buys the contents off you for almost a million bucks.
Back in 1989 a couple in Long Island, New York, paid about $100 for a storage unit without knowing the contents. Once they popped the door, we’re assuming with a dramatic shot of a cutting wheel shooting sparks as it slices the padlock, the couple found not just A 1976 Lotus Esprit, but THE 1976 Lotus Esprit used in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me as a submarine.
It was one of eight used in the film, but the only one actually in the underwater scenes. It was used, stored there and forgotten.
This 1976 Lotus Esprit was bought for about $100.
This 1976 Lotus Esprit sold at RM Sotheby’s for almost $1 million.
This 1976 Lotus Esprit was bought by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
This 1976 Lotus Esprit can actually go underwater.
This 1976 Lotus Esprit can’t drive on land.
This 1976 Lotus Esprit was part of the inspiration for the Cybertruck, according to Musk.
At first, “they really didn’t know what it was,” Doug Redenius, co-founder of the Ian Fleming Foundation, which authenticated the car, told NBC News in 2013 of the couple. They had never even seen a Bond film, according to CNBC, and “they had no idea how valuable their discovery was.”
The husband was planning to fix the car, but he got a call while hauling it home via CB radio. The man on the other end said, “You know you have a Bond car?” They rented the movie and realized what they had.
After getting the Lotus Esprit authenticated by the original builders, the couple put it up for auction in 2013 at RM Sotheby’s. It was sold to a secret buyer for $997,000. That buyer was Elon Musk.
“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. I was disappointed to learn that it can’t actually transform. What I’m going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real,” Musk told Jalopnik in a statement in 2013.
The car can’t drive on land, but it can actually go underwater with ballasts and propellers for control. The electric motor is watertight, but the cabin is not. During filming, according to Sotheby’s, a Navy SEAL piloted the machine wearing full scuba gear with an oxygen tank.
Good for the couple, and good for Musk. Everyone’s happy.
H/T: CNBC
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