JAMES Bond's amphibious Lotus Esprit from the 1976 blockbuster, The Spy Who Loved Me, has come under the hammer.
However, far from being crushed, it has raised more than £110,000 at a British auction and will now cross the Atlantic.
Unlike the underwater antics in the film, the Lotus will be onboard a boat when it makes the journey to its new home in Atlanta, Georgia.
It was bought by an American fan of Bond films and Lotus cars after a bout of furious bidding at a Bonhams auction in London where it finally fetched £111,500.
Driven by Roger Moore in the Bond film, the Lotus was adapted to travel underwater to enable 007 to thwart the efforts of megalomaniac Stromberg to destroy the world and create a new civilisation beneath the sea.
Helped by Russian spy and love interest Anya Amasova, Bond drove the Lotus both above and below water, at one stage emerging from beneath the waves on to a beach amid startled sun-bathers.
The fibre-bodied Esprit was a replacement for the Europa and originally used a two-litre 160bhp engine taken from the Jensen Healey that gave the lightweight Lotus a claimed 0-60mph acceleration time of under seven seconds and 138mph top speed.
The Esprit fetched 14 times its original £7,883 cost when new 32 years ago.