Is this wrong? Worlds most expensive car - £20 million!

[royfellows]

I dont know what others think, but I cannot help but feel that there is something wrong with a world where someone can afford to pay £20 million for a car. It is certainly a work of art, and certainly puts my humble Seraph to shame, but can any car be worth that much money?

I do believe that wealth is relative, but this is ridiculous.

Opinions? Feel free whatever, you certainly wont offend.

 

[ChrisJC]

It's a statement of wealth. It's not worth that much. It's the extreme end of the type of person who needs a shiny Audi Q8 on their drive to impress the neighbours.

Chris.

 

[Cantclimbtom]

I think the front is ugly, but I don't think BMW really care as I'm not a prospective buyer.

More importantly for me, whether I like it or not - it's most notable because the geometries of Rolls from the very first Royce 10 (1904) has been clear reference to Vitruvian Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man), most obviously the front grill but their proportions in a heap of other ways too. With the Amethyst they have thrown all the Rolls Royce history in the bin and taken all the styling cues from BMW i7 M70.

Sad to see so much heritage abandoned, just binned. Stick with your Seraph, Roy. This is probably the least Rolls Royce car that BMW ever designed

 

[JasonC]

In Capitalist systems, nothing has any intrinsic worth, only what someone will pay for it. So if some knob with more money than he* knows what to do with will pay it, then it's worth that much.

On the other hand, you could pay roughly 500 junior doctors for a year with the same amount.

*and of course, it would be a he!

 

[ZombieCake]

The front radiator grill is starting to look a bit like a typical Bad Man's Wheels grill, if a bit more angular. I thought the hyperbole bo***cks from the presenter rather amusing. Seems wealth and taste may not always belong in the same sentence!

 

[alastairgott]

Maybe Rolls Royce started thinking they need to appeal to a younger audience in the early 2000’s, their heads must have been rolling after this video/advert by a rival brand.

 

[mikem]

Any car can be worth that much if they don't sell very many, because that's what it costs to develop almost all compliant vehicles nowadays

 

[royfellows]

2022 was a new record for Rolls Royce worldwide sales at over 6,000 vehicles, so they must be doing something right. Well from a commercial standpoint anyway.
As far as the main thrust of my thread goes, I myself are of two minds. There are many people in the world who do not even have a supply of fresh water, never mind anything else. And it does seem immoral that someone should have that much money just to spend on a car. On the other hand, has anyone said that life is fair. The Goodwood factory employs about 1200 people, and they are hopefully paying UK taxes.

 

[mikem]

The employees are definitely paying UK taxes, whether all companies are is a different matter. The world never has & never will be "fair", even if you force it to be it won't last for long.

 

[Cantclimbtom]

... ... ... I myself are of two minds. There are many people in the world who do not even have a supply of fresh water... ... ...

I'm not in 2 minds. While I respect their freedom to do so, I think anyone who paid 20 Million for a status symbol car has a disgustingly hard heart, but we're straying into politics here..

 

[mikem]

But then 20 million divided by 8 billion people is only 0.25 pence each...

 

[TheBitterEnd]

If one earns £100,000 per year (a high income but not exceptionally so) then after 10 years one would have earned £1,000,000 - one million. It would take 10,000 years, yes ten thousand years, to earn one billion pounds. There are currently 171 billionaires in the UK alone.

Something needs to be corrected in the taxation system globally but political parties, at least the ones in power, are funded by ...

 

[Samouse1]

I did the maths not so long ago and I think it was something like $6.5 trillion could be taken away from the billionaire class without reducing the number of billionaires in the world…. The distribution of wealth in this world is severely skewed. But hey, they must have worked hard for it, with blood sweat and tears, right?

If Jeff Bezos worked at the current U.K. living wage 24 hours a day, and didn’t spend a penny, it would take him 1,450,000ish years to earn his current net worth. Human beings have been around for about a fifth of that time. Make it make sense….

 

[mikem]

It doesn't make sense, but people want to buy stuff that rich people have & make them richer. & the more you tax the rich the more of them move somewhere else that's more lenient, so you lose all the potential income - that doesn't make sense for the government either.

 

[alastairgott]

I’ve heard that you can’t buy a new Ferrari unless you’ve owned 3 already, at 200k plus per car, by the time you’ve bought your brand Spanker you’ve probably shelled out 1.5mill at the minimum and waited few quite a few months/years.

 

[mikem]

If you have enough money you can buy anything, but previously owning other models doesn't guarantee you can get exclusive releases either.

 

[Fjell]

Almost all spending ends up as wages. It is actually quite hard to spend money that only benefits yourself. There is no way a billionaire can spend more than a small fraction of that on themselves, the only real power they have is directing investment (as opposed to governments). I tend to think people who succeed like that might be more skilled than the average MP here.

 

[Pitlamp]

I'm not in 2 minds. While I respect their freedom to do so, I think anyone who paid 20 Million for a status symbol car has a disgustingly hard heart, but we're straying into politics here..

Point taken - but we don't know the context. For example, some ridiculously wealthy people are very philanthropic and make far more valuable charitable contributions. So perhaps they can be forgiven a "small" extravagance?

But I'd have no interest in such toys. I mean, how much caving gear could you fit into that tiny boot?

 

[tony from suffolk]

It doesn't make sense, but people want to buy stuff that rich people have & make them richer. & the more you tax the rich the more of them move somewhere else that's more lenient, so you lose all the potential income - that doesn't make sense for the government either.

That's a story rich people & their media mouthpieces like to perpetrate.

 

[ChrisJC]

A point worth noting about all of these billionaires is that they don't have their wealth as cash in the bank. It's mostly shares. So if a left leaning government decided to 'windfall tax' them, they would have to dump shares. A sufficiently large tax bill could bring down some quite large companies, which might not be a good idea.

Bill Gates is very philanthropic. Steve Jobs was not.

Chris.