02 Jun 09
Lotus Esprit (Getty Images)
James Bond's Lotus Esprit submarine car
The Eighties was a funny old decade: suddenly we became obsessed by technology. Clive Sinclair's C5, the rubber-keyed Spectrum 48K, Space Invaders, briefcase-sized mobile phones, Amstrad word processors...
Roger Moore's Bond was no exception.
The producers had decided that machine gun cars with ejector seats were, well, old hat, and that they needed to up the ante. What about a car that went under water?
Well, of course - but let's not use an Aston - that'll sink like a stone.
The Lotus Esprit S1 was chosen for underwater duty and made its first appearance in The Spy Who Loved Me. It was kitted out with a self-exploding alarm, missiles in the rear hatch, a periscope and radar. Two cars and two bodyshells were used in the chase sequence and after filming they all 'went missing'.
One turned up: it had been left in a scrapyard in the Bahamas until a crane operator of the film recovered it, painted it red and plonked it on bricks in his front garden. Each Christmas he would decorate it with fairy lights to, y'know, brighten the place up a bit.
The car was eventually recovered by the Ian Fleming Foundation and now it takes pride of place at the Beaulieu Motor Museum.
Another Lotus is also on display at the Cars of the Stars museum in Keswick, Cumbria, and a third car fetched £111,500 at a Bonham's auction, bought by a private US collector. It now resides in a lock-up in Atlanta, Georgia.
