Car Musings

You know, it's a lot easier to contemplate which car I'd get if I were going to spend like five hundred thousand dollars on one; it's a lot harder when I constrain my musings to at most about fifty thousand.

Four hundred thousand dollars of literally superfast automobile.

I've actually been thinking about this for a pretty long time and it's neat because, assuming I don't go ahead and drop out of college (which is always an enticing option) in two or three years I could be making a pretty significant amount of money.

What would I get for myself? I wouldn't have to worry about hauling around a lot of stuff, the car's just for my own transportation and enjoyment. What would be a really neat car under fifty thousand dollars (maybe well under that) for a 23 to 24-year-old?

Recently I've thought an M2 would be perfect. The ol' M3  may be the obvious choice, but I've driven both the current M3 and M4 and they're not really the same car as an M2. They both feel significantly more performance oriented. It feels like you're not doing them any justice if you haven't scheduled several track days at Laguna Seca for you to go and wring them out and eat some tires. The M2's far more of a normal driver's car that just happens to also be perfectly tuned for zipping around some winding roads. However, more recently I've actually started to doubt whether an M2 would be cool enough, something that's a significant concern if you're spending forty to fifty thousand dollars on a sports car. I've only ever driven in one other person's M2-like car (it was a 1-series) and it seemed kind of hilariously small for a grown-ass man. The owner was also gay, so maybe an M2 would be perfect for him, but I'm not trying to send that kind of message.

So I started thinking about the Chevy SS, a sort of American M5. It's got a Corvette engine in it, and I hear they all come equipped with GM's crazy magnetic suspension that apparently makes any car with it ride better than if they'd made the chassis out of Tempurpedic mattresses. So it's fully equipped, fast and it probably isn't going to make you look gay. The problem is, it's going to make you look like a Chevy Cruze owner, because the styling is so plain and even tacky (it's got several fake vents) that it could easily be mistaken for something far tamer.

"Look dad! A Chevy Cruze!"
Pictured: a Chevy SS

The exhaust note and cloud of smoke you leave behind as you fly away thanks to the SS's ridiculous V8 won't leave any room for doubt that it's anything but ordinary, but for almost the same price you could just go ahead and get a Corvette. I know there are plenty of other connotations that go with owning a Corvette, but even despite them I'd buy one over an SS any day, and I wouldn't likely get a Corvette as my only car. So, logically the SS is out.

Then my dad sent me an image of an Audi RS3 and I was off thinking about it for several days, but  it's got the same problems that the M2 has and we're really getting quite far from the forty to fifty thousand dollar range, even if I were to buy a certified pre-owned model.

I really don't know what I'll do, but it's fun to give the whole endeavor some real thought. No real answers here or conclusions. We'll see how the market for cars marketed toward 24-year-olds with more money than sense looks in a couple years.