You ask someone what their dream car is and you'll get all kinds of mega cars that cost millions of dollars.
I never gave much thought about cars until relatively recently. I drove a 1984 Chevette well into my 20s. That was all I could afford.
But over the years, fate and prosperity have been kind to me and getting the untouchable dream car starts to become a reality. But a lifetime of ignorance on cars means I've had to play catch-up. Having been burning the midnight oil for the past 15 or so years, I've finally reached the point where I can start to afford really cool stuff.
In just over 10 years, I've gone from the Chevette to a Jaguar S-Type R which is what I have now. The Jaguar S-Type R is a roughly $65,000 car. In a couple of years, I will be getting a new car. But the next step up involves looking at cars that you have to order literally a year or more in advance. Which means I have to start thinking about these things now.
Here are some of the cars I'm thinking of:
1) The BMW M5. It's a Sedan which means I can fit 5 people in it. Wife, and 3 kids. So it is practical. It's also about 500hp and does 0 to 60 in under 5 seconds. It's even faster than the Jag in theory.
2) The BMW M6. Not a Sedan and not really any faster but still an awesome car. But the BMW's have a really goofy transmision system.
3) Porsche 911 Turbo. Now this is starting to cost real money. $130k to get the version I'd want to get. Ironically, the Porsche has a really crappy GPS system. I know, it's a minor thing but at that price, there should be no compromises.
4) Ferrari F430. This is at the high end of what I would be willing or able to afford at this point. It's actually slower than the Porsche but it's a Ferrari. The problem with this and the other super cars is reliability. I am not a car collector. I plan to actually drive whatever I get pretty much every day (at least in good weather). Ferrari's and up tend to ironically be fairly unreliable by reputation.
What is a real bummer for me, as a Detroiter, is that there are no American cars on the short list. The Ford GT looks interesting but has reliability problems and just doesn't seem very interesting. Corvettes, here in Detroit, are a dime a dozen. The various high end Caddy's are somewhat interesting but I don't like the way they look. That pretty much leaves me with what I've mentioned here.
I figure now is the time to get some ridiculous car because the car after this one will be when I hit (gulp) 40 and I plan to have a more modest, reasonable car by then lest one thinks that I'm experiencing a mid life crisis. In reality, I just want to have a really cool car while I'm still young. So if you had $150k or so as your budget on a car, what would you get?