Most of us can relate to the sheer teenage anticipation of finally having your own set of wheels. Once you have those keys, a lifetime of motorized fun awaits, taking you over highways, byways, freeways, and one-ways with the thrum of an engine or the hum of an electric motor as a soundtrack. However, like all lifetimes, it will have to end someday.
There will be a point in life where each person buys their last car, truck, or motorcycle. Hopefully, it’s one of those things that happens in old age, but it’s something we aren’t escaping. By the time I’m old, I’d be ripe for a GT car of sorts, something fast and comfortable that gets the blood flowing while soothing my aged bones. However, I can’t help but feel this unnerving horror that reasonably lightweight, involving sports cars might not have a future on new car showroom floors.
By the time I turn 80, more than half a century will have passed from the time at which I’m writing this. Is there any chance the cars of today will be viable as classics, what with all their embedded software and even the question mark around fossil fuels? I’m hoping they will be, which is why I’d want my last car to be a Lotus Evora GT. With the confidence of Toyota’s 2GR-FE V6, a curb weight of 3,112 pounds, and a manual gearbox, it’s a solid recipe for driving nirvana.
So, what do you want your last vehicle to be? Whether a touring bike like a Honda Goldwing, a classic squarebody Chevy truck, or some moonshot like an Aston Martin DBS or a Donkervoort, I’d love to know what you see yourself growing old with.
(Photo credits: Lotus)
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My 911or my Fiat Spider. I’m a keeper!
I’m 60, I hope to keep and live in my 1973 GMC Motorhome, and pull a trailer with a BMW R1200 or 1250 RT motorcycle in the back, as long as I’m able. I may end up downsizing the bike as I get older, and I need to buy it first.
I’m closing in on 70, and, no matter how plebeian, I intend to keep my 2015 Fit until I cannot drive. Then I will donate it to whichever Honda museum wants it.
I may buy other cars between now and then, but this was a retirement present to myself after 36 years of living in NYC with no car. It’s been absolutely wonderful.
It’s been everywhere east of Idaho and Utah from home in Tampa Bay. And we aren’t done.
just turned 81, still love cars but the practicality of aging is that you won’t want a low-slung sports car by then. You will change; I know. I have owned many cars where my ass rode not far from the pavement. It would now take a lot of time and probably mechanical assistance just to get said ass in and out of them. Even a Honda Accord is a challenge. Just now I am driving a M-B GLC 350e. Easy access, good visibility, quality ride, even, albeit minimally, a PHEV. My last car? Maybe this is it although I would consider a GLE.
Manual Blackwing.
I bought it 10 years ago: 1998 Mercedes CLK320 coupé. That does all I want.
some old V8 dinosaur in 60 years from now.
I picture something like the Oldsmobile 4-4-2 from “Demolition Man”..
I am closer to this choice than Thomas and most of the readers, but my similarly aged wife (also on Medicare) shocked me a couple days ago when she said she wanted to be buried in her Bronco Badlands with the Sasquatch package.
I want the Munsters Hearse built by Barris Kustoms. I would move to the Villages and annoy the piss out of all those old posers until I died. Then my ashes would be placed in a custom urn on a little built-in shrine. I would leave it to the Lane Museum where I could be on display forever.
A new BMW 7 Series or a luxury EV SUV, like the iX…or maybe a EQS SUV
991 911…. Bulletproof and fun
The OG Mini Cooper, if my fat ass can still get into it. I’d drive it inside my mansion (I plan on getting rich, TBH), shouting out “you’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” to the family as they jump out of the way.
Jaguar E-type, even if too old to drive it I can enjoy looking at it in the garage.
Ferrari 412.
It looks like ass, but it coddles you in ways I had never experienced before. And that leather smell is intoxicating.
The V12 is silky smooth and the gearbox a sensual pleasure I can’t convey with words.
It just invites you to roll down the window, put your elbow there and just drive across the continent.
That’d be a fine cruiser for the hopefully wealthy old fart I’m gonna be.