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Couple Sell $100 James Bond Car For $1 Million

By Michael Bamidele

02 December 2019   |   3:15 pm

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In 1989, a couple from Long Island, New York bought an unclaimed storage unit for $100 (₦36,250) in a blind auction. Neither they nor the seller had any idea what was inside the unit. When the couple opened the unit, they were in for what would likely be the surprise of their lives: Buried under…

Couple Sells $100 James Bond Car For $1 Million | The Spy Who Loved Me Movie CLIP (1977) screenshot

In 1989, a couple from Long Island, New York bought an unclaimed storage unit for $100 (₦36,250) in a blind auction. Neither they nor the seller had any idea what was inside the unit.

When the couple opened the unit, they were in for what would likely be the surprise of their lives: Buried under some old blankets was a 1976 Lotus Esprit sports car – the same car James Bond drove in the 1977 Bond film, “The Spy Who Loved Me.” In the film, James Bond escaped a helicopter attack when he drove the sports car into the sea, the car famously transformed into a mobile submarine and fired missiles while underwater.

The couple had no idea what they had just discovered.

The sports car was one of eight used in the filming of the Roger Moore Bond film but it was the only one that operated in underwater scenes. After the filming, it was placed in a storage unit and forgotten for over a decade until the New York couple bought the storage unit.

The couple had never even seen a James Bond film.

“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, who ran a business renting construction tools.

Redenius added, “They had no idea how valuable their discovery was.”

The husband had planned on fixing the sports car’s dented roof and making other improvements. But after they loaded the car onto a truck and set off for home, truckers contacted them via CB radio to let them know they were hauling a James Bond car, according to Redenius.

The husband later “went out and rented the film on VHS and saw what he had,” Redenius told NBC.

After the couple “cosmetically restored” the vehicle, they displayed it in occasional exhibits over the next two decades before deciding to put it up for auction in 2013.

Actors Barbara Bach and Roger Moore, stars of the James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me,” sit on the 1976 Lotus Esprit.Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Redenius added in the 2013 interview that he had heard about the car’s existence years after the couple started exhibiting it, and he sought them out. He authenticated the car with the original builders and put the couple in touch with RM Sotheby’s, telling the couple before the auction that ”‘if [the car] sells for what we’re hoping, that money will give you an opportunity to live very comfortably for the rest of your life.’”

The Lotus sold at auction at RM Sotheby’s in 2013 to a secret buyer. It was later revealed that the new owner was Elon Musk, and he reportedly paid $997,000 (₦361,412,500) for the car.

Musk said he’d grown up watching the Bond film:

“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 the auto blog Jalopnik in a statement in 2013.

To originally equip the Lotus for the film, a marine engineering firm converted it into a functional submarine at a cost of more than $100,000 (the equivalent of nearly $425,000 today).

The car was nicknamed “Wet Willie,” and used for underwater scenes. When it was sold in 2013 it had no wheels, only “articulated fins.” It also couldn’t drive on land, but it did actually work as a submarine, with ballast tanks to make diving possible. The car also featured “a bank of four propellers” in the back of the vehicle that let it move underwater while being powered by electric motors in a water-tight compartment.

During filming, the underwater scenes were performed by a retired U.S. Navy SEAL wearing full scuba gear with an oxygen tank, as the car’s interior was filled with water, according to Sotheby’s.

Recently, Musk said in a tweet that the car served as part of the inspiration for Tesla’s new Cybertruck.

Cybertruck design influenced partly by The Spy Who Loved Me https://t.co/HKBzxFNfzm

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2019

In August, a 1965 Aston Martin DB5 outfitted with special gadgets for James Bond was sold for $6.4 million. The car had features such as tire slashers, machine guns and a bulletproof shield.