Man Paid $99 For Shipping Container Before $763k Discovery Which Was Sold To Elon Musk

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A man who paid just $99(£78) for a mysterious storage container found a valuable object inside that was worth more than $763k ( £600k).

One of the most iconic vehicles in movie history was inside the cheap container that an American man and his brother opened in 1989.

At first glance, the brothers didn't think much of it because all they saw inside the container was a "giant lump covered in blankets."

The enormous mass, however, was actually a white sports car with a crumpled roof when a closer examination revealed that it was wheelless.

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The siblings made the decision to identify the car, and it was discovered that it was truly the well-known James Bond submersible car from The Spy Who Loved Me.

It was estimated that the car, known as "Wet Nellie" on-set, cost more than $100,000 (£78,400) to build back in the 1970s.

It was driven in a mountainside chase and then fell into the ocean in the 1977 movie, which starred Roger Moore and Barbara Bach.

The car's wheels shrunk and it transformed into a streamlined submarine when it was submerged in water.

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According to reports, at least two cars were utilized to film the pursuit sequence, three were used to take underwater pictures, and a fourth was used to film a moving submarine.

NBC News claims that the co-founder of the Ian Fleming Foundation, Doug Redenius, was the one who assigned value to the extraordinary discovery.

He said: "They really didn’t know what it was at first. They had no idea how valuable their discovery was."

24 years after the expensive discovery, the automobile was offered for sale at an auction.

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According to The Guardian, Elon Musk outbid the competitors to win the submersible car at a London auction in September 2013. He paid $997,000 (£616,000).

Despite making the Lotus Espirit acquisition in secret at first, he later released a statement about the venerable James Bond automobile.

He said: “It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me drive his Lotus Espirit 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.”

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"What I’m going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real.”

However, Musk's ingenuity and ambition remained undeterred, as he declared his intention to infuse the legendary vehicle with a modern twist.

Musk's audacious plan involved upgrading the car with a Tesla electric powertrain, aiming to bring to life the fantastical transformation that had captured the imagination of countless moviegoers. With this bold vision, the James Bond submersible car, once a creation of fiction and fantasy, found itself on the precipice of becoming a tangible reality, a testament to the interplay between imagination, innovation, and the enduring magic of cinema.