Elon Musk paid nearly $1 million for abandoned car couple found in $100 storage unit
When you think of Elon Musk and cars, the first thing that comes to mind is his billion dollar car brand Tesla but very few will think of this abandoned motor.
The billionaire, 52, has made some massive purchases in his time, with the most obvious recent one being his $44 billion buyout of Twitter - now known as X - last October.
Another purchase that Musk has made is the $1 million deal he struck with a couple to buy a car for a very special reason.
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Obviously, for the wealthiest person in the world, who is worth an estimated US$226 billion as of September 2023, a million dollars is just spare change.
But for the couple, they made a massive fortune, considering how much they paid to own the car in the first place.
In 1989, a young couple, who still remain anonymous to this day, paid $100 for an unclaimed storage unit.
The auction was a blind one, meaning they and the seller had no idea what was inside the unit.
The couple, from Long Island, New York, were left with the biggest surprise of their lives.
Under some dusty, old blankets was the 1976 Lotus Esprit sports car used in the 1977 Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me.
The sports car transforms into a submarine and fires missiles while underwater in the film. So, you can clearly see why it'd be such a hot commodity.
The Lotus was left in the storage unit for more than a decade after the Roger Moore Bond movie.
When the couple first found the car, 'they really didn’t know what it was', according to Doug Redenius, the man who authenticated the car.
Speaking to NBC in 2013, Redenius said that the couple had never watched a Bond film before and 'had no idea how valuable their discovery was'.
The husband planned on making some improvements to the car's dented roof and also some general car improvements.
But after they loaded the car onto the truck, truckers contacted them to let them know they were in possession of a Bond car.
After displaying it at occasional exhibits over a period of two decades, the couple decided to put it up for auction in 2013.
At the RM Sotheby, the car was sold to a secret buyer for a staggering $997,000, and the couple were, of course, delighted.
This is when Elon Musk stepped in, with it later being revealed that the same man who wants to put humans on Mars by 2029 had made the car purchase.
Perhaps his most recent child, Techno Mechanicus, will inherit the car one day!
Gregory Robinson