AutoGuide Dream Car Garages: $500,000 Edition

Come to think of it, I really shouldn’t be writing about cars at all if this is supposed to be a $500,000 “dream car garage.”

Literally speaking, my dream car garage would probably be a massive warehouse with enough square footage for a go-kart course, a bowling alley and a snooker table, all a safe distance from whatever I happened to be parking in there at the time.

I would want a pickup truck for tailgating – crew cab half-ton and you can fill in the rest, – a late 70’s Trans Am with the Pontiac 400 motor would be cool to have because I’m classy like that and I would probably also want a Grand Sport C6 Corvette. That would be enough. I’m not sure Chevrolet will ever build a car that I enjoy looking at more than the C6. Ed Welburn’s team might do it.

But that isn’t the point and I’m being facetious. If I had that kind of cash to blow on cars today or lose tomorrow, I would almost definitely lose the money because as anyone who works at AutoGuide.com knows, I’m painfully indecisive about car purchases.

That said, I would be elated to own any of the following cars and many others.

2015 Camaro Z/28 – $75,000. Earlier this year I had the chance to spend some time lapping in the new Camaro Z/28 and if I had the money, I would have already bought one. I doubt the LS7 will see very much action – if any – in the future, and that makes the Z/28 that much more special in my mind. I’m sure that the incoming Alpha-based Camaros will have scores of advantages over the outgoing Zeta-based Camaros, but this will live as a truly special car in my heart.

2015 Porsche Cayman S – $75,200. But for all the control and power that 300 series front tires and a 7.0-liter V8 can offer the Z/28, there’s no getting around the fact that Chevy’s track star is still seriously heavy. Last January I had the unusual opportunity to drive the Porsche Cayman S on an ice course and I walked away with a deep respect for how well balanced it is. Its light curb weight alleviates the need for gratuitous horsepower and ultimately that winds up making the Cayman much more rewarding to drive.

Panoz Roadster – $36,000. This one’s just for me. I saw one of these in person for the first time roughly a year ago in Orlando and I desperately want to drive one. It’s a simple car with a 5.0-liter V8 and very little weight resting on the wheels. It doesn’t have a top, radio, heater, air conditioner or almost anything else that isn’t totally essential to being either street legal or able to move under its own power. It isn’t practical and I don’t care.

2010 HSV Maloo converted to left-hand drive – $85,000. Speaking of impractical, how about a two-seat pickup truck with a monster of a V8 under the hood and a manual transmission? If you live in Australia, they aren’t terribly uncommon, but Utes are pretty much unheard of in this part of the world because they aren’t available. That is, unless you give a big pile of money to the guys at Left Hand Utes in Denver, Colo.

They convert Holden Utes to be street legal in the U.S. and they have a green Maloo with a 6.2-liter V8 that should be good for somewhere in the ballpark of 425 hp with practically no weight over the rear wheels. I drove a tamer version of the Holden Ute in South Australia last year and I’ve been dreaming of finding a way to do it again ever since.

NC Miata with Chevrolet LS3 – $39,495. If you haven’t noticed already, I have a soft spot for GM’s pushrod V8s. Some day I hope to own one of these. It’s an NC Mazda MX-5 that’s been gutted, bolstered and stuffed with an LS3. Basically you can think of this thing as a model day iteration of the Shelby Cobra. They’re horribly expensive to build, but some guy in New York is selling his and asking $39,500 OBO.

Cadillac CTS-V Wagon – $71,770. What’s not to love? It’s a station wagon with a TR-6060 gearbox and an LSA. Well you could argue that the transmission is relatively unrefined and that an OHV engine is similarly barbaric, but I wouldn’t. Instead I’d rather focus on the 556 hp and 551 lb-ft of torque cranking out of the engine bay to the tune of a whining supercharger. Honestly I like the coupe better than the wagon, but this is the car on my list available in a practical body style.

2013 Corvette ZR1 – $109,000. Now, the LSA is nice but I would really rather have access to the LS9 and the Corvette ZR1 that came wrapped around it.

This is the most expensive car on my list and far more than I could handle with my current skill as a driver. But who cares? It’s a supercharged C6 and as I wrote earlier, these are basically the pinnacle of sports car aesthetics in my mind. It isn’t as powerful as the new Z06, but that isn’t the point.

Toyota MR2 Spyder

If you’ve been keeping track – I’m not sure why you would – that leaves about $5,500 to spare. Ignoring the fact that two replacement tires for the Z/28 would chew through that spare change, I would probably want to spend the remainder on a Toyota MR2 Spyder. It ought to be especially dependable, it’s certain to be entertaining and almost certain to have lived free of the “Fast and Furious” crowd that loves to tinker with the turbocharged MKII models oh so much. At roughly five grand, it would probably have an awful lot of miles clocked, but if I had to buy a high mileage sports car this would probably be it.