James Bond’s Submarine Car Up for Auction

Posted on Aug 19 2013 - 10:01am by Thomas Sharp

If you have ever seen the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me then there are probably a few things you remember most of all. First of all, there was our old friend Jaws. However, gadget fans will no doubt fondly recall the car which turned into a submarine in a fantastic underwater chase sequence.

This was a custom built Lotus Esprit Series 1 vehicle which was called Wet Nellie during filming and looked absolutely fantastic on the big screen but what happened to it after the filming? Well, it turns out that it was put into storage at some point and was only discovered again in 1989.

Now this classy vehicle is being put up for auction. It was built by Perry Oceanographic for the 1977 007 film and as reputed to have cost $100,000 (around £65,000) which at today’s prices probably is probably about 5 times that figure.

A Lucky Bid

bondThe story behind the vehicle being discovered in storage is pretty interesting. It was put into pre paid storage at some point after the filming and when the contract ran out and no one claimed the contents of the storage container it was put up for blind auction. You can imagine the shock the people who made the winning bid got when they saw what they now owned.

It is now going to be auctioned by RM Auctions, who recently did the work on the sale of the Aston Martin DB5 which was featured on the films Thunderball and Goldfinger. That Bond vehicle went for almost £3m. Would you pay more for the submarine car?

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