Most of us here at Digital Trends have been convinced for sometime now that co-founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, must be a secret, Bond-like super villain. I say secret because although he’s not yet unveiled a death-ray, we feel like he could at any time.
Now, however, we’re convinced of it.
News just surfaced that Mr. Musk was in fact the $866,000 auction winner of the Lotus Esprit submarine car that Roger Moore drove, as 007, into the sea in the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.
This alone might be a wacky story – but it gets better. Musk plans to fit the Esprit with a Tesla drivetrain and then to make it both a functional car and submarine – a feat not even the technical wizards behind the original sub build were capable of.
Here’s how Musk put it in his own words, via Jalopnik: “It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ drive his Lotus Esprit off a pier, press a button and have it transform into a submarine underwater. I was disappointed to learn that it can’t actually transform. What I’m going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real.”
This will be no small undertaking, making an electric sub that can also drive on land.
Aside from the obvious clash between electrons and water, Musk’s engineers will have to make the car safely transform from land-lover to salty sea dog. Then, and perhaps most difficult of all, designers will have to also overcome the natural downforce created by the Lotus’ bodywork, which sends the sub straight to the sea floor.
We’re quite excited by the prospect of Mr. Musk’s new toy. We hope that it A.) doesn’t end up killing him and B.) keeps him busy long enough to delay his inevitable conquering of the eastern seaboard.
