Boeing once built a vehicle that technically qualifies as the most expensive car ever made. In today’s money, it cost around $281 million to develop—a staggering sum that makes even the rarest hypercars look cheap. Yet, this high-budget marvel was not engineered for speed or luxury but to traverse a very specific landscape: the Moon.
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The $281 Million Boeing Vehicle
In the early 1970s, NASA commissioned Boeing and Delco to design a small electric vehicle for astronauts to navigate the Moon’s rugged terrain. Initially valued at $19 million, the project’s budget ballooned due to unforeseen technical challenges. By 1971, it had doubled to $38 million—approximately $281 million today.
The engineers faced a daunting task: create a vehicle that was lightweight yet robust enough to endure the harsh lunar environment while carrying astronauts and scientific equipment. The end result was the Lunar Roving Vehicle, which tipped the scales at a mere 463 pounds—lighter than many compact cars on Earth.
Even with its light frame, the rover was capable of carrying up to 1,080 pounds of astronauts, scientific tools, and other gear. It was powered by four small electric motors that produced a combined total of about one horsepower—roughly equivalent to that of a standard lawn mower. As expected, the rover’s top speed was limited to about 8 mph. However, during the Apollo 17 mission, astronaut Eugene Cernan managed to push one to an impressive 11.2 mph, a record for any vehicle on the lunar surface.
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Supercars Parked Permanently in Space
NASA constructed only a limited number of Lunar Roving Vehicles, three of which were utilized during the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 missions. These vehicles enabled astronauts to explore the Moon’s surface far beyond their landing sites, significantly expanding the areas they could investigate.
However, once the lunar missions concluded, transporting the rovers back to Earth proved impractical. Spacecraft carrying the astronauts lacked the room to accommodate such cumbersome equipment. Hence, the lunar rovers were left parked on the Moon, exactly where they were last operated.
Today, those three NASA Lunar Roving Vehicles remain exactly where they were left, approximately 238,900 miles away from Earth. Hence, the prestigious title of the most expensive car ever built doesn’t reside in a museum or a billionaire’s collection; it’s resting on the Moon.
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