Long Island, 1989. In one of the usual auctions for desperate or visionaries, a man and his brother bought a abandoned containerunaware of the incredible discovery they would make, capable of changing both their lives. Often the place of broken mattresses and rusty tools, on that occasion i 150 dollars (around 125 euros at the exchange rate) spent allowed us to get our hands on an extremely rare and expensive car, under moldy gray sheets.
The discovery
As soon as they lifted the tire, the buyers were petrified: it was hiding a White Lotus Esprit. Although neither of them was a lover of cinema or motors, the association was immediate: it was the sub-auto used by James Bond in The spy who loved meprotagonist of a daring escape that resulted in his transformation into a submarine. Directed by Lewis Gilbert, the never forgotten Roger Moore played the role of the most well-known and loved agent on the big screen and left part of his magnetism to the machine, which has rightfully entered into legend.
The brothers learned the whole truth later, once they brought the find to someone in the sector and noticed his shocked reaction: it was “Wet Nellie”one of eight examples used during filming, some for the street action scenes, others, like this one, for the aquatic metamorphosis. At the time (the film was released in 1977) the realization of the car cost over $100,000a figure that is not so impressive when compared today to the historical and symbolic weight of the James Bond brand.
It’s as if luck rained from the sky. For a lifetime people chase collections, auctions, authenticity, and then the heirloom disappears in a container, among cobwebs and the smell of mold, and remains there over the next two decades. He was only waiting for the right opportunity to make his return to the scene, surrounded by an aura of magnificence.
The change of hands to Elon Musk
In 2013 the car finally got the limelight during an auction attended by businessmen of the highest social class, willing to go to any expense to add it to their personal garage, including a certain Elon Musk. Already the man-face of Tesla, the Scrooge of Scrooges, participates in the ceremony and steals the Esprit from the competition by writing a check to $997,000around 850,000 euros at the exchange rate of the time and put an end to the hopes of any bold dreamer. As for why he wanted to buy it, he doesn’t mention Roger Moore and the meaning of the 007 saga in Hollywood, rather he is interested in making it seriously become a car capable of entering water and coming out intact, driven needless to say by an electric Tesla powertrain.
In a certain sense, the story that made the news constitutes the metaphor of the 007 culture. Even props that are only functional to a collective imagination are consecrated as icons, and the same goes for an Aston Martin DB5 used in Agent 007 – Goldfinger Missionchanged hands for $3.5 million. And if tomorrow someone found a briefcase in a reviewable condition in a garage in New Jersey, but with any piece from the set inside, the same fight would probably break out to secure it.
