The key to car enthusiasm is not the car, it’s the enthusiasm. At AutoZone yesterday I saw two dudes very excitedly using a heat gun to apply crappy tint to the back window of a worn E100 generation Toyota Corolla. The car had been extensively modified in a way that wasn’t to my taste and, yet, I was having fun just watching them have fun with their car. Today’s review of the Maybach EQS680 SUV from contributor Daniel Golson surfaced a lot of feelings about fancy cars and enthusiasm.
I was excited to have Daniel to review this car because it’s not to my taste. I prefer the understated luxury of a Bentley. Daniel enjoys these cars, though, and it’s important for us to sometimes feature voices that are not exactly ours (though we do love having our own distinct voice as a site made up of automotive misfits). My sense is that there is no car too fancy for Daniel.
That isn’t to say we’re all dirtbags like David around here. Adrian drives an old Ferrari, Beau has plenty of nice cars, and Mercedes’s Phaeton love shows her to be a true appreciator of the finer things in life. While my BMW has more than 230,000 miles on the clock, it was still originally marketed as a luxury car. This whole experience had me wondering what the upper limit of “nice” is for most people.
Personally, I’d be fine with a brand new Porsche 911 T but I’d have a hard time justifying owning a brand new Zenvo (though I’d be fine borrowing one, ahem). My exact upper limit is probably an Alpina XB7, which costs about $150,000 and is all the fancy I can handle. There’s just something about owning a car that’s more expensive than my house that I’d have trouble with, although maybe if I had a nicer house it wouldn’t bother me as much!
What about you? What’s the nicest car you’d feel comfortable owning?
If you’re thinking like fancy car excluding sportscars I think maybe the most fancy I would get away with is a amg e55 wagon.