Wet Nellie

Wet Nellie is a custom-built submarine, created for the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. In the film, it was portrayed as a highly modified version of a Lotus Esprit sports car.

Design and Features

The Wet Nellie was designed by Perry Oceanographic, a marine engineering company based in Riviera Beach, Florida. The vehicle was built from a Lotus Esprit Series 1 bodyshell, which was modified to operate as a fully functional, self-propelled submarine. The vehicle was not a prop, but a fully operational submarine, capable of submerging and maneuvering underwater.

The Wet Nellie was equipped with several fictional features for the film, including surface-to-air missiles, cement sprayers to blind pursuing vehicles, and a sea-to-air microfilm transfer system. These features were added in post-production and did not function in the actual vehicle.

In Popular Culture

The Wet Nellie has become an iconic symbol of the James Bond franchise. It has been featured in several exhibitions and displays, including the Barbican Centre's "Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style" exhibition in 2012.

Ownership and Current Status

After filming, the Wet Nellie was stored in a pre-paid storage unit in Long Island, New York. In 1989, the unit was put up for blind public auction due to unpaid rent. The winning bidders, unaware of the contents, discovered the Wet Nellie upon opening the unit. The vehicle was later sold at auction in 2013 to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, for £616,000.

Musk has stated plans to convert the Wet Nellie into a real car-submarine hybrid, using electric powertrain technology from Tesla.

See Also

• List of James Bond vehicles
• Lotus Esprit
• The Spy Who Loved Me