The anonymous buyer of the Lotus Esprit submarine car from the James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me has turned out to be billionaire Elon Musk.
Internet entrepreneur and PayPal founder, Musk was the chap whose private space company SpaceX successfully launched the Dragon in May 2012, to regularly restock NASA's International Space Station.
The white Lotus Esprit S1 made famous in Roger Moore's Bond 1977 film (which also featured Barbara Bach, later wife of Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr) was sold at a UK auction last month. As is typical of most auctions, the identity of the buyer was confidential but Musk has since been outed as the new owner.
The sale came 24 years after the car was found in a New York storage container which had been purchased for just £64 / US$100!
And apparently, Musk plans to get the car working as an actual transformable aqua-vehicle: "It was amazing as a little kid to watch James Bond 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 and try to make it transform for real."
But at £550K / US$866K, the Lotus is by no means the most valuable Bond car: in 2010, a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 used in Goldfinger and Thunderball sold for US$4.6m!!
Internet entrepreneur and PayPal founder, Musk was the chap whose private space company SpaceX successfully launched the Dragon in May 2012, to regularly restock NASA's International Space Station.
The white Lotus Esprit S1 made famous in Roger Moore's Bond 1977 film (which also featured Barbara Bach, later wife of Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr) was sold at a UK auction last month. As is typical of most auctions, the identity of the buyer was confidential but Musk has since been outed as the new owner.
She's NOT an optional extra! |
And apparently, Musk plans to get the car working as an actual transformable aqua-vehicle: "It was amazing as a little kid to watch James Bond 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 and try to make it transform for real."
But at £550K / US$866K, the Lotus is by no means the most valuable Bond car: in 2010, a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 used in Goldfinger and Thunderball sold for US$4.6m!!
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