Elon Musk’s car collection over the years: from the million-dollar McLaren F1 he destroyed, to the Lotus Esprit submarine car from James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had many, many different cars over the years. His first was a 1978 BMW 320i, which he paid just US$1,400 for, and at one point, a McLaren F1 was his daily ride – before he totalled it on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley in 2000.
These days, Musk is usually seen cruising around in a Tesla Model S – unless, of course, he’s taking the Tesla Cybertruck out for a spin.
Here’s a closer look at Musk’s car collection over the years.
The first car Musk bought was an old 1978 BMW 320i that he snapped up for just US$1,400
Musk said in a Forbes video that he bought the car in 1994 and fixed it up himself. He had it for two years until one of the wheels fell off, an unfortunate incident that happened after one of the interns from his first company, Zip2, was driving it.
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When Musk got his first bonus from Zip2, the software company he co-founded with his brother, Musk used the money to buy a 1967 E-Type Jaguar
Musk explained in a Forbes video that when he was 17 he was given a book of classic convertibles. The convertible he liked best from the book was the Jaguar E-Type, so he told himself if he ever could afford it he would buy one.
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When he got that initial bonus check of US$40,000, Musk bought the car.
“That one was like a bad girlfriend – it kept breaking down on me and causing me all sorts of trouble,” Musk said of the car in the video.
After Musk sold PayPal, he bought a McLaren F1 – which he later totalled
“I had it for several years and I put 11,000 miles on it and I drove it from LA to San Francisco. I had it as a daily driver,” Musk said of his McLaren F1 in an interview with Pando Daily seven years ago.
New, the car sold for nearly a million dollars.
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Musk was driving with Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal with Musk, in 2000 when he wrecked the car.
“I floored it and did a lane change,” he told Pando Daily. “The McClaren has no traction control or anything, it has massive power to the wheels. It has 640 break horse power and only weights a ton … and it started spinning. I remember seeing the cars coming towards me while I was going backwards.
“Then we hit an embankment which tossed the car into the air like a discus and it kept rotating and slammed down on the ground.”
Luckily, neither he nor Thiel were hurt. They were on their way to see Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital, at the time. After the accident they both hitched a ride to the meeting anyway.
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In 2013, Musk bought the Lotus Esprit submarine car that’s used in the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me
Musk paid US$920,000 for the car at auction.
“It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me drive his Lotus Esprit off a pier, press a button and have it transform into a submarine underwater,” Musk said in a statement to Huffington Post.
“I was disappointed to learn that it can’t actually transform. What I’m going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real,” he added.
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Musk also owned an Audi Q7, which inspired him to include falcon-wing doors on the Tesla Model S
Musk said he wanted to make a car where the door could open in tight spaces and allow you to access the third-row without putting the second-row seats down.
Accessing that third-row easily was a problem Musk claimed he had with his Audi Q7. “The Audi Q7 is particularly horrendous,” he told Forbes. “Even in the best-case scenario, you need to be a dwarf mountain climber to get into the back seat,” he joked.
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Musk revealed on Twitter in 2017 that a friend gifted him a vintage Ford Model T
Something that shouldn’t be surprising given that Musk is something of a modern day Henry Ford. When the Model T was released to the public in 1908 it cost US$850
He also put a car in space for a few million years …
Musk of course owns a Tesla Roadster, but it’s not currently parked in his garage – it’s in space.
In 2018, SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket. Inside, Musk parked his own Roadster with an astronaut dummy named Starman at the wheel.
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The rocket is currently orbiting the sun, passing by Venus and Mercury as well – researchers have predicted that the Roadster inside will orbit the sun for the next few million years. Musk said last year that SpaceX could launch another rocket to catch up with the car “in a few years”.
So what is he driving today?
Musk most recently said that he usually drives a Tesla Model S Performance, and if he’s with his kids, he’ll take a Model X.
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And last December, Musk was spotted driving to dinner in Malibu, California, in Tesla’s new Cybertruck. So many cars, so little time …
This article originally appeared in Business Insider
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The road to the Tesla Model S has seen CEO Elon Musk work through a car collection most could only dream of – from a US$1,400 BMW to a vintage Jaguar E-type and a Ford Model T that first appeared in 2008 – so just which models does he have, and why did he send one into orbit for millions of years?