In 1989, a Long Island couple bid on a storage unit they had never seen inside and won it for about $100. Behind the door sat the Lotus Esprit submarine from the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. Twenty-four years later, Elon Musk bought it.
On screen, the white wedge drove off a pier and turned into a sub. Off screen, it sat for years in the dark, forgotten by the people who paid to store it.
Here is how the prop worked, how it was lost and found, and what the sale really brought.
How the Lotus Esprit submarine worked
The film’s star car was not a car at all underwater. Lotus supplied two production road cars and seven Esprit fiberglass body shells for the film, according to RM Sotheby’s. Crews sealed one of those shells and turned it into a working submarine. Counts differ, though. NBC News and SlashGear both describe it as one of eight versions used in the film, and the only one used for the underwater scenes. The auction house catalogued it as “Wet Nellie.”
Perry Oceanographics, a marine engineering firm in Riviera Beach, Florida, did the conversion, the auction house says. The job reportedly cost more than $100,000. Four propellers, driven by electric motors, pushed it through the water. Batteries rode in a watertight compartment. Meanwhile, the driver worked mechanical levers to move the fins, and ballast tanks handled diving and climbing.
It was also a wet sub, so the pilot sat in the water. Don Griffin, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL who worked for Perry as a technician and test pilot, drove it in scuba gear, RM Sotheby’s says.
Lost in a storage unit for years
After filming, the sub toured 1977 auto shows in New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles, according to RM Sotheby’s. Then it went into a storage unit in Holbrook, New York, on a lease reportedly paid 10 years in advance.
When the lease ran out, nobody came back for it. In 1989, the unit went up for auction sight unseen after the rent fell behind, the auction house says. A local couple won it with a modest bid.
They paid $100 in a blind auction, SlashGear reports. In fact, the couple had never seen a James Bond movie. NBC News described the buyer as a construction contractor who hoped to find power tools inside. Instead, he found a finned Lotus with no wheels.
The couple ran a construction tool rental business, according to MotorBiscuit. The husband planned to fix the dented roof. Then truckers on the CB radio told him what he had.
Proving it was the real Bond car
Doug Redenius, co-founder of the Ian Fleming Foundation, authenticated the car, SlashGear reports. He told NBC News that the studio left it in storage without paying, and it “just fell through the cracks.”
The owners then restored the outside to museum-display quality, while the operating gear inside stayed complete and original, RM Sotheby’s says. Later, they showed it now and then on a custom trailer. It spent time at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, too. Otherwise, it stayed out of sight until its first public sale.
What the Lotus Esprit submarine sold for
RM Sotheby’s offered it at its London sale in 2013. The auction house records the result as £616,000. At the time, NBC News reported a hammer price of £550,000. With commission, the final figure came to $967,120. That was below the presale estimate of $990,000 to $1.45 million.
Why did it fall short? The sub has fins and propellers but no wheels, and experts told NBC News that may have cooled buyer interest. By comparison, the 1964 Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger had sold for $4.6 million in 2010, the same report noted.
The dollar figure tied to Musk varies by outlet. SlashGear and Asia Times both say he reportedly paid $997,000. However, MotorBiscuit notes that The Hollywood Reporter put it at $968,000.
The buyer stayed anonymous at first and was later revealed to be Musk, Asia Times reports. “It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond,” Musk said in 2013, per SlashGear. He added that he was disappointed it couldn’t really transform.
From Bond prop to Cybertruck
Musk had a plan for it. He said he would “upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real,” Asia Times reports. By 2017, he had given up on the transforming idea, according to SlashGear.
Still, the car left a mark on Tesla. In a 2019 tweet, Musk said the Cybertruck’s design took partial inspiration from Wet Nellie, SlashGear reports.
More from Fast Lane Only
