Please Don’t Spend $1 Million on this Beetle

I think it’s time we all sit down and, as a group, face the fact that things are getting of hand.

Air-cooled Beetles are great. I love ’em. Original, low mile cars are interesting. I want one. A car’s value is often determined by emotion. I instinctually understand that. But it’s time we all agree that we’ve grown a little too comfortable with the idea of spending $1 million on a car and take a moral accounting of what that means.

Yes, this Beetle has only 22 miles on the odometer. Yes, it’s rare. Yes, it’s a good generation of Beetle (not the best, though). But no, spending half of the annual budget entire Village of Cold Spring, New York for it is not reasonable.

The only reason to think that a Beetle is worth $1 million is because you think that if you don’t drive and sell it again next year, it’ll be worth more. And that’s what today’s kids are calling a speculative bubble, something Dutch tulip enthusiasts tangled with 300 years ago and we’ve apparently never gotten over. Their bubble popped, so will this one.

And that’s to say nothing of the moral cost of rich people shuffling money around amongst themselves, spending ludicrous sums on luxury items that benefit no one apart from an even smaller cohort of wealthy artisans (mechanics) who serve them.

Yes, other people are allowed to spend their money how they like, and I’m no financial expert but it doesn’t take a professor of economics to see that spending $1 million on a Beetle is stupid. So allow me to suggest some much less stupid ways to spend $1 million:

Spend $9,500 on this “unmolested” ’64 Beetle in near perfect condition (a Beetle that actually runs and drives and whose hoses haven’t spent 54 years hardening into brittle trash that will clog carb jets and brake systems).
Spend $990,000 on Puerto Rico Relief. Or on hospitals. Or give it to a library. Pay for someone’s medical care if you want to make be sure your money will have a big impact. Pay someone’s college tuition if you want to feel a little less sad. Spend too much money on local goods if you want to improve the lives in your proximity. Invest in blue chip stocks if your only concern is turning a profit. Do all of the above. Or just give it to your mom, she deserves it.

Do that and you get a very cool car that is every bit the time capsule the million dollar bug is, but has the added benefit of also being, you know, a car–seriously, the 22-mile Beetle is effectively a 1:1 Hot Wheels. Plus, you’re doing immeasurably more support other humans, make the world a better place, or just earn a little money in a financially sound way.

$1,000,000 is a lot of money and it’s ridiculous to squirrel it all away buying a product that trades all of its functionality for a number on an odometer and then charges a literal 10,000% markup.

So yeah, please don’t spend $1,000,000 on this Beetle.

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