We have just become aware that some ancient shipping info, viewed by a reliable source many years ago, indicated all 4 Roadsters were going to the same firm in China: VINs 1107, 1120, 1146, & 1185.
The original purchaser was an R&D center for a Chinese auto company, that subsequently went bankrupt, and the assumption is these were purchased for reverse engineering to be disassembled. In 2010, the Tesla Roadster was after all a state-of-the-art EV, before the Model S even came out, and would have been of enormous value to an emerging EV company.
Instead of being disassembled, and rendered into a pile parts in an R&D lab, at least three of these Roadsters survived, intact, to live on in someone’s collection.