James Bond’s £550,000 Submarine Car

Everyone wants to be like James Bond, cool, slick and own the latest gadgets and cars. Speaking of cars there’s been a fair few in the bond movies hasn’t there, Alfa Romeo’s, SAABs, Bentleys, Aston Martins, Audis and the list is never ending. There is one in particular that stands out however, the Lotus as it wasn’t just any Lotus. The car that was in the film “The Spy Who Loved Me” had something quite special about it, this car wasn’t a car at all it was a Submarine.

In the film the Lotus was capable of transforming from an ordinary car into a submarine. Sir Roger Moore drove this vehicle in the 1977 film, the tenth of the Bond series and recently it’s gone under the hammer in London. Car collectors in abundance bid on the car desperately trying to grasp a whiff of their childhood hero and when the hammer fell the settling figure was £550,000 which is a bargain compared to the DB5 that was used in Goldfinger and Thunderball which sold for £2.9 million in 2010.

The fantastic thing about this car is it’s actually a fully functional submarine, although it’s more a submarine styled car because well you can’t actually driver it on the road. Not only is it not a car but the stunt wasn’t actually performed by Sir Roger Moore either it was a stunt driver by the name of Don Griffin, but still a submarine styled like a car? That’s awesome! You will also have the great feeling as James Bond fans all over the world look at the car in envy as they once watched it transform itself into a submarine on a movie screen.

So why has this car just gone under auction now? Abandoned by the production company left to rot in a container for 10 years the Lotus was unused and unloved, the payment eventually ran out on the container and it was put up for sale bought by someone in Long Island in 1989 who purchased the storage container and got a little surprise as to what he found. Reportedly the person who owned the car for some time had no idea it was in the Bond Film until he was notified by other drivers as he drove the car home on the back of a truck, after keeping a hold of it for the best part of 24 years he finally decided it was time to sell and what a nice profit he would of made.

The car when it was made was said to have cost just over $100,000 which in today’s equivalent to nearly half a million dollars today, convert that to pounds you will get £313,185 add the fact it’s a collector’s item and highly coveted and believe me £550,000 is a bargain! The submarine was estimated at a price between £650,000 – £950,000 but turned in just low of the mark.