The £6m Garage
Aston's new Zagato pairing costs £6 million. Imagine the kind of collection could you amass with that...
Yes, yes, I know. To be amongst the 19 buyers selected by Aston to spend six million of your hard earned/ easily inherited/ luckily won pounds on the new DBZ Century Collection, you'll already have to have bought more Aston Martins than most of us have had cars. As such you'll likely boast a garage which contains many, perhaps dozens, of exotics within its walls; what to spend your money on will not be an either-or decision.
Still, there's an opportunity cost to everything, and with Gaydon's latest money-spinning venture obliterating the already eye-watering sums charged for its previous creations, it got us wondering; just how extensive a collection could you assemble for the money?
Well, as you may have noticed, cars are pretty expensive these days, and rare ones become even more so the second they enter the used market. LaFerraris are quite dear, while Porsche 918s and McLaren P1s both sit well above the million pound mark. You could go out and buy the entire 'Holy Trinity', then, and still have a million or so left over to flesh out your collection, but that rather lacks imagination, don't you think?
Forget about seven-digit hypercars then; to do this properly we'll have to start by replacing the Astons we're missing out on. This Vanquish Zagato ought to do nicely, with only 1,200 miles on the clock and a price of £690,000 it ticks all of the right achingly beautiful, coachbuilt boxes. Next up is this DB6. Yes, you could have a DB5 for less money, and no it doesn't have the cachet of a DB4 GT Zagato, but it's also a lot cheaper. What it does have going for it is a 4,500-hour restoration to as-new condition by Aston Martin Works, the very same people who'll be building those Continuation DB4s. It's absolutely stunning and, unlike those Continuation cars, it's road legal too. It's also Bahama Yellow - why aren't more cars Bahama Yellow?!
With those two in the bag I still have over £4.6 million left to spend. From here on out it's going to be down to personal preference, so enormous is the breadth of options available. You could, and should, spend hours assembling a fantasy collection which covers every conceivable base, but for the purposes of keeping this to fewer than 10,000 words - and with the self-imposed rule of no POA listings allowed - this is what I'd go for:
We'll start with the toys. A Ferrari 458 Challenge (£140,000) for track days and race events and this Mercedes Gigaspace (£300,000) to go there in. What could be better than touring the circuits of the UK and Europe with your very own Ferrari racer, the 9,000rpm V8 screaming in your ears from Silverstone to Spa and Anglesey to Ascari? For more spontaneous excursions, this £50,000 Caterham 620R SV should do the trick nicely.
When it comes to daily driving, I'd go with newer options, if only for the creature comforts that they possess. Two Giulia Quadrifoglios (£120,000) sound like just the ticket - y'know, so there'd always be one available just in case/ when the other needed fixing. A GTC4 Lusso (£240,000) would definitely make the list too - with a set of winter tyres for when the weather turns bad. Finally, for when I fancy a drink, or am simply too tired from a weekend behind the wheel of my 458 Challenge to contemplate any more driving, a new Rolls-Royce Phantom (£400,000) would be my clichéd chauffer choice.
Supercars next. This 32,000-mile Murcielago SV (£280,000) is perfectly poised to have a few thousand more miles added to its odometer, as is this 30,000 mile RUF CTR2 (£625,000) and, left-hand drive or not, I would have to have a Lexus LFA (£470,000). To round things out, a Spyker C8 Laviolette (£200,000) seems like a necessity; after all if you're going to own six million quid's worth of cars, you should let your eccentricity shine through a little.
Finally there are the indulgences - as if everything else on this list didn't already fall into that category. A staggering pre-war Bentley, which I've always fantasized about owning, would have to be on the list. This one, with a fantastic recent history encompassing exactly the kind of adventures I'd want to have in it, will take up just over a tenth of the total budget at £625,000. And spending £10,000 on this good-as-new Mk1 MX-5 may be crazy to a normal person, but at this level becomes a no-brainer; it's a car I've always loved, and the money is a trifling amount in the face of a £6,000,000 budget.
To finish things off, and because scrolling the classifieds is starting to drive me insane, I'd drop a cool £1.2m ($1.5m) on this Sunseeker yacht, and sail off to somewhere peaceful enough to reflect on which of my cars I'd like to drive next.
What would you choose though? Would you blow it all on a few pricey purchases, or go for quantity over (relative) quality? Perhaps you'd just splurge on Aston's original offering? Let us know in the comments below but be warned, once you go down the classifieds rabbit hole, you may not come back up for some time!
I could ask £10m for my house, I'm never going to get it in my lifetime.
Seems to be a willy waving competition for the super rich, i.e. what pointless thing did I spend money on this week.
Williams Singer 911
AC Cobra 427
Aston Martin DB4 (GT if funds available but not Zagato)
Ferrari 458 Speciale
Jaguar E-Type Lightweight (recreation to keep cost down but Revival/historics eligible)
Ferrari Daytona (Spyder if funds allow)
Lamborghini Aventador
Ferrari 488 Spider
Range Rover Sport SVR
Aston Martin DB11 AMR
MGC GT Sebring replica by MG Motorsport
That feels about £6m without doing any maths! Plenty of other cars if any money left over!
Eagle Speedster
Lola T70
Lancia Stratos
Lancia 037
Ford GT
Lotus Type 14 Elite Super 95
Lotus IX
Lotus Eleven
Lotus 23b
Lotus 30
Lotus Elise GT1
Lotus Esprit GT1
Ferrari Testarossa
Ferrari 250 GTO
Vector W8
Marussia B2
Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale
Lamborghini Countach 5000 QV
Cheetah
TVR Griffith 200/400
Bugatti EB110 SS
People can decide for themselves how many cars is "enough".
Daily cars:
GTC4 Lusso for me
Tesla model X for the wife
Dodge Challenger Hellcat wide body (also for the wife, she likes them)
Toys
Giulia GTA
599 GTO
360CS
430 Scuderia
458 Speciale
488 Pista
Toys to get built:
a Defender 90 with a supercharged Jag engine
a really authentic GT40 replica
I'm not sure what else I'd need. I'd like a GT3RS but I'm not sure I'd drive it if I had a Ferrari. I'd probably save the money and just buy each new limited edition Ferrari - hopefully I'd get a slot if I had the full collection!
I would say that If something is overpriced, it is overpriced no matter how much money you have?
The benefit of spending the extra (say) £5k is the same however wealthy you are, it gets you the same amount of extra enjoyment / reduced hassle. However, the extra £5k as a proportion of your available cash is much smaller, hence why it becomes 'worth it' to buy expensive items as you get richer, even though there are diminishing returns for your money.
Daily cars:
GTC4 Lusso for me
Tesla model X for the wife
Dodge Challenger Hellcat wide body (also for the wife, she likes them)
Toys
Giulia GTA
599 GTO
360CS
430 Scuderia
458 Speciale
488 Pista
Toys to get built:
a Defender 90 with a supercharged Jag engine
a really authentic GT40 replica
I'm not sure what else I'd need. I'd like a GT3RS but I'm not sure I'd drive it if I had a Ferrari. I'd probably save the money and just buy each new limited edition Ferrari - hopefully I'd get a slot if I had the full collection!
288GTO
F40
348GTC
and some classics, a 512BB and a Dino would be nice.
That'll do me for now.
Taken to its basic level, perhaps we should all spend no more than £500 on an old Fiesta and donate any more car budget to charity. It's such a subjective thing to decide. When I see a Rolls Phantom, I wonder how anyone can justify spending 350k on a car, yet many people do buy them, and they don't need to justify the spend to anyone. As for the question about taste - again it's subjective. One man's Mansory G-Wagen is another man's British Racing Green Aston Martin.
Of course opinions do come in to the equation and, as such, I'm guilty of making my hatred of the ever-growing hordes of SUVs public.
The only person you need to justify car purchase price to is yourself (+/- immediate family). As much as I would love to blow £6m on a garage, I hate the idea of a warehouse full of cars not being used.
For me, £100k would be more than enough, but if someone else's limit is £10k or £6m, that's their affair.
For £100k:
Big fast estate car (Alpina B5/D5, Merc E350 etc.)
Fun car - Mazda MX-5
Town car - Fiat Panda
Bike - Moto Guzzi 850TT - new model
For £6million
Recent recreation of Lancia Integrale - £250k
Mustang V8 in yellow with black bonnet stripes - £45k
Aston DB4 GT Zagato - possibly the most beautiful car ever built - £1.5m
Rolls Royce Phantom Coupe - £150k used
Maserati Quattroporte - £100k
Alpina B5 estate - £100k
Alfa Romeo Giulia V6 2.9 Quaddra-wotsit £60k
VW Golf GTi £30k
Fiat Panda £12k
Honda CBX £7k (restored)
Norton 961 £14k
BMW R1200RT SE £14k
Moto Guzzi 1400 California £15k
Harley Davidson Fat Bob 114 ci £18k
Up to about £2.2m and I'm struggling.........
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