2007 Lotus Elise on 2040-cars

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The Stig breaks into Lotus F1 HQ

As Top Gear's mysterious test driver, The Stig has driven just about everything on wheels - and more than a few things without. But an F1 car? That still remains a rarity, even on Top Gear.
That all changes in this latest promo clip, though. The video shows what happened when his Royal Stigness arrived at the headquarters of the Lotus F1 team in Enstone, England, where he somehow managed to scan his way in past security and got his hands on a Lotus-Renault E21, the V8-powered single-seater that Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean drove in the 2013 Formula One World Championship - and which the Stig will apparently be driving on stage during the upcoming Top Gear Festival in Durban. If you're not heading to South Africa this month, though (or even if you are), you can check out the footage in the video below.

James Bond Lotus Esprit submarine car headed to auction [w/video]

We've covered many cars from the movies and TV that have made their way to auction (the original Batmobile, good old General Lee and even Bond's iconic Aston Martin DB5), but this one ranks up there among the rarest and coolest. RM Auctions has just announced that the Lotus Esprit submarine car used in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me has been added to the docket for its upcoming auction in London, September 8-9.
Of course, there are dozens of Bond cars floating around out there in collections, but none as unique as this Lotus, which ended a chase scene in the movie by taking a long walk off a short pier and transforming itself into a submersible. Since CGI was a meaningless collection of letters back then, the producers of the film actually built a fully functional Lotus Esprit submarine for the shoot. They hired Perry Oceangraphic in Florida to turn one of their six Esprit body shells into a fully functioning submarine, and former US Navy Seal Don Griffin was tapped for piloting duties. RM Auctions claims the Esprit submarine cost over $100,000 to build at the time, which is about $400,000 in today's dollars.
The submarine car comes with a incredible story, too. After filming in the '70s, it was shipped to Long Island, NY where it was kept in a storage unit that was paid in advance for ten years. When the storage contract ended in 1989 and no one claimed the contents, they were sold off in a blind auction to an area couple who had no idea what they were getting. The car has been shown occasionally in the years since, but its value remained purely speculative, until now. To date, the most valuable Bond car we know of is the original Aston Martin DB5 used in Goldfinger and Thunderball that sold for $4.6 million in 2010, but when the gavel falls at RM Auctions' London sale in September, we'll find out if the car nicknamed "Wet Nellie" on set can beat it.

Lotus spotted testing more extreme Elise on the Nordschleife

If we had a nickel for every version of the Elise that Lotus has rolled out over the years, we might actually have enough spare change to buy one ourselves. And we're not even talking about the entire separate models (like the Exige and Europa) that Lotus has based on the Elise's platform or the other automakers' cars (like the Tesla Roadster and Hennessey Venom GT) that have used the same. And now Lotus appears to be testing another one.
Spotted lapping the Nürburgring, what we're looking at here appears to be the track-bound Elise S Cup R, but our intrepid paparazzi by the side of the track tell us it's missing the switches for the battery isolator and fire extinguisher. In their place, this Elise is wearing an even bigger rear wing as part of an altogether rather aggressive aero kit - not to mention a rockin' matte red wrap.
All of these telltales make us think Lotus has something extreme in the works, and we could find out what exactly it is as early as the Paris Motor Show in October, so stay tuned and watch this space.