For your eyes only: a piece of Bond history is up for auction

Welcome back to our monthly snoop around the world's auction houses, where we unearth the cars with the best stories. And this month, we've found a gadget laden gem that's sure to leave you shaken and stirred. It's a genuine piece of James Bond history, a car that became a submarine, and a story that involves one of the most famous car chases in cinema, a forgotten storage container, and the world's richest man. Intrigued? You should be.

Coming up for sale at RM Sotheby's ultra glamorous Monaco auction on 25th April is a 1977 Lotus Esprit S1. But not just any Esprit. This is one of the actual bodyshells used in the filming of the 1977 blockbuster, The Spy Who Loved Me. It's a prop from the legendary sequence where Roger Moore's 007, pursued by a gun toting helicopter along the Sardinian coast, casually drives his white Lotus off a pier and into the sea. The car then transforms into a submarine, complete with fins, propellers, and torpedoes. It was a moment of pure movie magic, and this is your chance to own a piece of it.

Nobody does it better

This isn't the fully functioning submarine car, nicknamed 'Wet Nellie', which was famously bought by Tesla billionaire Elon Musk back in 2013 for a cool £616,000. That was a one off, fully operational wet sub built by Perry Oceanographic in Florida for around $100,000, a huge sum in the 70s. No, this lot is one of the seven spare bodyshells that Lotus supplied to EON Productions for the film. These shells were used for various shots during the iconic transformation sequence, and this particular one is fitted with the full 'Wet Nellie' hallmarks: dive planes, stabilising fins, a periscope, four impellers, reinforced windows, and a torpedo launcher. It's a static prop, a ghost from the movie set, but it's no less cool for it.

The story of the actual submarine car is the stuff of legend. After its promotional tour, it was put in a storage container in Long Island, New York, with the lease pre paid for ten years. When the lease ran out, nobody came to claim it. The container went to a blind auction in 1989, where a local couple bought it for less than $100, not knowing what was inside. Imagine their surprise when they opened it up to find a finned, white Lotus Esprit, minus the wheels. They owned it for over 20 years before its identity was confirmed and it was eventually sold to a delighted Elon Musk, who reportedly planned to convert it into a working car submarine using a Tesla electric drivetrain. Whether he's actually done that is anyone's guess.

From Brescia to Finland to Monaco

This particular prop has its own journey. It was bought by a car collector in Brescia, Italy, at auction back in September 1998, then changed hands to another Italian in 2002, before being snapped up by a Finnish collector in 2007. For almost two decades, it sat on crowd pleasing display at the PowerPark amusement park in Alaharma, Finland. Then, in the summer of 2025, it was sent to Makela Auto Tuning in Kannus for a full restoration, including a partial repaint. It doesn't have an engine, running gear, or an interior, and it's presented on an easy to move display stand. But what it does have is a story that money can't normally buy.

RM Sotheby's are offering it without reserve, with an estimate of €200,000 to €300,000. That's roughly £170,000 to £255,000 at today's rates. For a genuine piece of one of the most famous car sequences in cinema history, that feels like a bargain. Especially when you consider Musk paid over six times that for the actual submarine.

A modern car for a modern Bond

The Esprit S1 was a deliberate choice to modernise Roger Moore's Bond and distance him from Sean Connery's iconic Aston Martin DB5. With its futuristic 'folded paper' design by the legendary Giorgetto Giugiaro, the fibreglass bodied, mid engined Esprit was Britain's most advanced sports car when it launched. It weighed under 1,000 kg, had a 2.0 litre twin cam four cylinder engine putting out 160 bhp, and could hit 138 mph. For 1976, that was seriously quick.

The story of how Lotus landed the Bond gig is brilliant. One version has Don McLauchlan, Lotus's head of PR, cheekily parking a debadged Esprit outside producer Cubby Broccoli's office at Pinewood Studios. A crowd gathered, Broccoli included, and McLauchlan simply got in and drove off, leaving the producer desperate to find out who made the car. The other version, from the film's art director Peter Lamont, says that's complete rubbish and production designer Ken Adam simply rang Lotus after seeing the car in a magazine. Either way, the result was the same: after the film's release, Lotus had a three year waiting list. Not bad for a bit of product placement.

Want to see the lot for yourself?

If you fancy a closer look, you can view the full lot listing with all the photos on the RM Sotheby's website right here: https://rmsothebys.com/auctions/mc26/lots/n0016-lotus-esprit-s1-the-spy-who-loved-me-film-prop-display/

Why this one matters

With the film's 50th anniversary coming up in 2027, the timing couldn't be better. Bond memorabilia has always been collectible, but screen used props from the classic era are becoming increasingly rare. This is a 400 kg slice of pure, unadulterated movie fantasy. For a Bond aficionado, it's the ultimate conversation piece. For a classic car collector, it's a piece of automotive and cinematic history rolled into one. And for the rest of us, it's just a really, really cool thing.

So, would you bid on it? Or would you rather have the real thing and try to prise Wet Nellie out of Elon Musk's hands? Good luck with that one.

Until next month, happy bidding.