With the pandemic reducing the supply of new cars and driving up the price of used cars, it can be easy to assume that your dream of splurging on a heavily depreciated performance car that you could never afford to buy new will be forever out of reach. . For example, there was a time when I thought I might one day afford it a first generation Audi R8 with manual transmission. I just checked, and yes, that will definitely never happen. And then there’s the Maserati GranTurismo.
Today, a few of us were discussing the disconnect between ordinary people’s impressions of Maseratis and their actual quality. As Adam said, “IIt always amazes me how ordinary people think they are Maseratis, Bentleys or Rolls Royces in terms of quality and expense, when really they are like a level above Alfa.”True, and yet there has always been that little voice in the back of my head saying, “What if you make a bad decision and buy a GranTurismo?” I don’t want to make a bad decision, but at least now they’re so expensive that I couldn’t buy one, let alone afford the luxury of having one.
So I made what seemed like a smart decision at the time and looked for used GranTurismo listings in my area to make sure that buying one isn’t even remotely an option. As it turns out, it was a bad decision becauseapparently Early GranTurismos are now ridiculously cheap (to buy). Maybe I hadn’t been paying enough attention and should have known, but I expected the cheapest to be in the $30,000-$40,000 range. But no. There were several within a short drive for the low to mid 20s.
This is wrong. It’s still a Maserati, but unlike the models before it, the GranTurismos are actually real cars that you might be able to convince yourself won’t leave you broken and crying on the side of the road. Now I know I could actually afford the payments to $22,000 Maserati GranTurismo, and I don’t like it. It’s not the only one I’ve seen, and now tThe voice in my head now tells me, “Just do all the maintenance and repairs yourself, and you’ll be fine,” which is a really bad thing to hear when you’re trying to make smart life decisions.
I will not buy a cheap Maserati. I will not buy a cheap Maserati. I will not buy a cheap Maserati.
I will not buy a cheap Maserati. If I did, I would regret it quickly and I don’t have enough savings to take such a risky bet on something that could end up costing me so much money. But then again, you never know, I might get lucky. The last (and last) time I went on a cruise with my family, I found $250 in casino chips in a chair I was sitting on. That was very lucky, wasn’t it? Maybe I could have the same luck with a GranTurismo.
No, I definitely wouldn’t. But maybe you would?
