The Giugiaro Esprit, distinguished by its sharp angles and a wedge shape, was hugely popularised by the James Bond films "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "For Your Eyes Only"
A compressed air cannon was used to fire a mock-up shell from the
jetty and actually a miniature model was filmed in a water tank to
give the first shot of the car underwater
As is clear from the diver visible to the right of the car in
this photo, the full size shells were also used in filming
These photos are of framed drawings in the corridor of the 007 Sound Stage
at Pinewood Studios
The early artist's impressions of the underwater car are present,
along with some other memorable Bond sets
The builders of the Esprit submarine were Perry
Oceanographics, of Riviera
Beach, Florida, just outside Miami and about 200
miles from Nassau - Perry had a reputation for excellent marine
engineering and had built notable submersible vehicles, such as
the Reef Ranger, which also appears in the underwater scenes
Although minature models were also used, amusingly with "air"
bubbles produced by using Alka-Seltzer tablets, and three of the
full sized bodyshells were used also employed to give the illusion
of the road going Esprit transforming into the submarine, the
photo below should leave no doubt that filming with divers and the
Esprit submersible definitley took place
The craft was a fully functioning wet submarine - so unlike all
the subs produced in attempts to recreate the Esprit by the likes
of Top Gear, it was not water proof and the "passengers" had to
wear wet suits and use SCUBA - Self Contained Underwater Breathing
Apparatus
As these photos show, it was equipped with
ballast
tanks to adjust buoyancy and, of course, the electric
motor driven propellors and dive planes
visible from the exterior - two crew were required to operate
all the systems
Here are more shots of divers helping with filming of the Esprit
submersible, or "Wet Nellie" as she was affectionately known
The wedge profile of the Esprit also worked like a dive plane,
causing the craft to descend and the wheel arch mounted planes
would have been used to counteract this
Wet Nellie was obtained by Fred Stevenson, the distributor
of Lotus East USA after filming finished - he reportedly
said that sand and seaweed was very apparant inside when the shell
arrived and was sent to the New York Auto Show "!
Lotus West USA in Los Angeles took over custodianship after shows
in Cleveland, Chicago and Denver and then the story goes
that Wet Nellie ened up lost in an unmarked storage unit in
Holbrook, New York on a 10 year long rent and was not rediscovered
until an unknowing local couple won a blind auction in 1989 for
$100 and were amazed to see what the unit contained!
In September 2013, Elon Musk bought Wet
Nellie at an RM Sotheby's auction for £550,000
He has reportedly said that he will use Tesla electric motors
to convert it to a fully functioning and transforming submarine/car
as seen in The Spy Who Loved Me
These are my own photos from a visit to Beaulieu Motor Museum to
see one of the other "submarine Esprits" used for shots in The Spy
Who Loved Me... This Wet Nellie would be one of the other full
sized shells that wa used for filming the transformtion to a
submarine but it wouldn't contain any submersible equipment
In 1980 filming began at Sylva
at Kanoni, near Corfu Town and Lotus provided two Esprits to
continue the car's role as James Bond new preferred vehicle, this
time in the guise of the updated and more poweful Turbo Esprit
In the movie, Q shows Bond the "rebuilt" Esprit from
the explosion at MI6 HQ in London
Here is Carole Bouquet, who played Melina in For
Your Eyes Only, demonstrating how to exit an Esprit
The Bronze Turbo Esprit was used for
promotional events and was still owned by Lotus until 1998
when it sold for £25,878 in the Coys auction at the
Silverstone Historic Festival
The bronze car, pictured on the right
(minus the skis) in an eBay listing was sold for $210,000 -
making it world's most expensive Lotus Esprit at the time
I did also see Wet Nellie, the original submarine Esprit,
listed on eBay with the internal buoyancy tank and external
electric propulsion - it did not exceed the reserve price
I emailed the American who listed it and ascertained that the
reserve price was $1,000,000 and that they had already been
offered this amount by a museum, althugh as previulsy stated, it
sold at auction to Elon Musk for £550,000
It's the most popular car from the big screen
Despite Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls-Royce from Thunderbirds dominating recent headlines, a recent survey has revealed it is James Bond’s classic Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me, which is the nation’s most desirable screen vehicle.
Over 1,000 people voted for their favourite screen vehicle in the Yahoo! Search survey and the white Lotus Esprit car was the clear favourite securing almost a third of the vote followed by David Hasslehoff’s car Kit from Knight Rider (17%).
Patrick Oqvist from Yahoo! Search commented: "Although there’s loads of classic film vehicles out there, our search for the favourite has shown James Bond’s modified Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me a worthy winner. With rear firing mud sprayers, an underwater kit that changes the car into a fully operative submarine, surface-to-air missiles, underwater smoke screens and torpedoes the most desirable screen vehicle has to be Bond’s."
The full results were as follows:
1 - Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who
loved Me (29%)
2 - Kit from Knight Rider TV film (17%)
3 - De Lorean from Back To The Future
4 - Batmobile from Batman (10%)
5 - Mini from The Italian Job (9%)
6 -Gran Torino from Starsky & Hutch (6%)
7 - A-Team Van from The A-Team TV film (5%)
8 - Danny Zucko’s Greased Lightning from Grease (2%)
9 - Herbie from Herbie Goes Bananas (2%)
10 - Reliant Robin from Only Fools & Horses TV films
(2%)
Top Gear on Bond Esprit(wmv)Full scene (wmv)
Underwater scene (wmv)