The Lotus sports car featured in the James Bond movie “The Spy Who Loved Me” was sold on December 1st for 111,500 pounds ($166,000) with fees in London. The white 1976 Lotus Esprit had been expected to fetch as much as 120,000 pounds by Bonhams in the auction house’s 520-lot sale of collectors’ cars, motorcycles and automobiles at Olympia, west London.

It was sold via telephone to a collector from Atlanta, who described himself as “a Lotus and James Bond aficionado.” The Esprit comes complete with a surface-to-air-missile button on the gearstick!

Roger Moore, playing 007, drives the car toward the ocean in Sardinia in the film. Using a sister car, models and seven Lotus body shells, the director shows the Esprit growing fins and becoming a submarine. Bonhams sold the car’s sister in 1998 for a hammer price of 34,000 pounds, before fees.

After the 1977 movie was completed, the current car was returned to the Lotus factory, where it was turned back into a production-line model. Last year, the Esprit’s European owner had the “Q specification” Bond interior recreated by Lotus. Last month, the U.K. auction market for classic cars showed signs of improvement after the recent fall in value of sterling, said dealers.

On Nov. 19, Bonhams’s annual auction of classic cars in Harrogate, Yorkshire, fetched a record 1 million pounds, with fees. Ninety-five percent of the 532 lots (all of which were valued at less than 50,000 pounds) found buyers, who were based in 17 different countries.