The luxury-submarine business is sometimes hard to fathom.
"If you can find my submarine, it's yours," says Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich. That's all the reclusive owner of the Chelsea Football Club has to say.
The ocean floor is the final spending frontier for the world's richest people. Journeying to see what's on the bottom aboard a personal submersible is a wretched excess guaranteed to trump the average mogul's stable of vintage Bugattis or a $38 million round-trip ticket to the international space station aboard a Russian rocket.
Luxury-sub makers and salesmen from the Pacific Ocean to the Persian Gulf say fantasy and secrecy are the foundations of this nautical niche industry built on madcap multibillionaires.
"Everyone down there is a wealthy eccentric," says Jean-Claude Carme, vice president of marketing for U.S. Submarines, a Portland company that custom builds submarines. "They're all intensely secretive."
Who owns the estimated 100 luxury subs carousing the Seven Seas mostly remains a mystery. More MagazineLane.com
"If you can find my submarine, it's yours," says Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich. That's all the reclusive owner of the Chelsea Football Club has to say.
The ocean floor is the final spending frontier for the world's richest people. Journeying to see what's on the bottom aboard a personal submersible is a wretched excess guaranteed to trump the average mogul's stable of vintage Bugattis or a $38 million round-trip ticket to the international space station aboard a Russian rocket.
Luxury-sub makers and salesmen from the Pacific Ocean to the Persian Gulf say fantasy and secrecy are the foundations of this nautical niche industry built on madcap multibillionaires.
"Everyone down there is a wealthy eccentric," says Jean-Claude Carme, vice president of marketing for U.S. Submarines, a Portland company that custom builds submarines. "They're all intensely secretive."
Who owns the estimated 100 luxury subs carousing the Seven Seas mostly remains a mystery. More MagazineLane.com
