Yahoo Autos $1.5 Billion Powerball: Every New Car to Buy With Your Winnings
Tomorrow night, the hands of fate will make a decision. They’ll browse through a series of numbers, pluck six from the vine, and use that string to turn one person into a billionaire. That’s right, lottery fever is back, and this time the Powerball jackpot is a cool $1.5 billion — a full year and a half of interest payments on Elon Musk’s Twitter loans!
But we, as car writers, will put our dollars towards something a bit more practical than social media. Instead, we’re going to be buying cars — but with a few stipulations. New cars only, to be purchased at MSRP (we’ll ignore destination fees for now), and the big one: you can only get one make and model. That means multiples, hundreds or thousands of one single vehicle, taking up as much of the jackpot as possible. With $1.5 billion to burn, what brand-new vehicles would the Jalopnik staff buy?
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Collin Woodard — 428,693 Honda Groms
Cars are great, but motorcycles are better. And buying more motorcycles is better than buying fewer motorcycles. With $1.5 billion, you could buy 428,693 Honda Groms. That’s enough Groms to give one away to every single person who lives in Minneapolis. Imagine visiting Minneapolis and seeing the entire city packed with Groms. It would be beautiful.
José Rodriguez Jr. — 11,885 Porsche 911 Targa 4s
What car(s) would I buy if my lazy, computer-generated numbers won the lotto? First of all, I’d buy a mask to cover up my face as I collected my winnings. Have you ever read about what happens to lottery winners? It’s tragic. So, I’d need to hide my identity like some sort of masked vigilante who was not doling out justice but Porsche 911 Targas. About 11,885 of them.
The 2023 Porsche Targa 4 starts at $126,200 not including destination, but I’d like to think Porsche would let me get away with not paying for delivery if I was buying that many 911 Targas. I’d give away the Targas to family, friends and strangers alike — because strangers are the least of your worries if you were to win $1.5 billion.
Then again, if I woke up feeling paranoid after winning one of the biggest lottery purses ever, I’d probably just cancel the order for the Porsche 911 Targas and buy a single Alpine A110. The Alpine starts at €62,500, and since the Euro is still down that comes out to about $61,790. That’d leave plenty of money so I could move to France and legally own said Alpine A110.
Adam Ismail — Every Last Volkswagen Arteon
The Volkswagen Arteon is a beautiful car nobody talks about ever. We know it won’t stick around for long, because no passenger car will, and when it finally gives up the ghost we’re sure to award it a painful, heartfelt eulogy. That doesn’t feel like enough, though. No — what the Arteon deserves is one final explosion of love that it tragically never received during its lifespan.
According to what I could scrounge together from the internet’s car sales databases, Volkswagen sold just under 21,000 of these svelte sedans in Europe in 2021, and about 5,800 in U.S. and Canada if you couple those together. That’s of course to say nothing of the rest of the globe’s markets. Because we have a disgusting amount of cash at our disposal, let’s go for the most luxurious Arteon on offer — the SEL Premium R-Line, which comes in at $51,865, including destination. How many of those Arteons can you afford with our Powerball jackpot? 28,921. That vaguely squares with the total number of Arteons sold across much of the world last year. You can’t say it wasn’t meant to be.
Andy Kalmowitz — 4,763 of Every Hellcat
As a billionaire, I want nothing but the best. That’s why I’m choosing to only buy vehicles with the best engine currently on sale: the Stellantis 6.2-liter supercharged Hellcat engine.
There are currently four offerings for sale right now:
Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody: $79,445
Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat: $70,835
Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat: $84,000 (this is an estimate since its not on sale quite yet)
Ram 1500 TRX: $80,590
I went with the base models of each vehicle in order to maximize my vehicle potential. All in all, that tallies up to $314,870. That means, with my $1.5 billion in winnings, I can buy 4,763 of the Hellcat Quadruplets. That equals right around 3.35 million horsepower if I’m doing my math correctly. What could be better than that? Nothing.
(Note: Andy is not doing his math correctly. He would actually have 13,555,498 horsepower at his disposal. May god help us all. — SD)
Lalita Chemello — 4,285 Porsche 911 GT3 RSes
While we all try to forget what kind of horsepower Andy would be unleashing onto the world by himself, I have yet another idea. I have no reason to own several thousand cars. Where will I put them? But I know a few people who would be happy to share and play with some (all) of them.
So here’s my idea: I would budget $350,000 per person to custom build to their liking 4,285 Porsche GT3 RSs. Porsche Motorsports has carefully curated their motorsports pyramid set up for pros and amateurs alike to find their place in racing, or move their way up the ranks in racing. That means, I can pick 4,284 friends to join me and make single-manufacturer racing huge around the world!
OR, I can pick 40-ish friends – because any more than that is just too many cars on any track – who can have a car to race in 100 countries, or we can each have two (always could use a backup race car), in 50 countries and do our own single manufacturer race series.
If you have ever been to a GT3 Sprint Cup or Carrera Cup series race, and have experienced what 40 Porsches sound like when all together – oh it is a sight and sound to behold. Now, who wants to be my friend?
Owen Bellwood — 5,000 Leccy Landies
If you suddenly find yourself $1.5 billion richer, you’ve got no choice but to buy the best version of the best car ever made. And, obviously, that’s a classic Land Rover Defender converted to run on electricity. Beautiful.
If you’re this way inclined, you could get your hands on around 5,000 classic Defenders converted to run on electricity by ECD Automotive. This Florida-based outfit will take your lovely Landie and overhaul it inside and out. These conversions are absolutely stunning, and this way you could drive a different EV Defender every day for more than 13 years.
Erin Marquis —37,500 $40,000 Cybertrucks
Surprised? Don’t be. If I’m going to spend imaginary money why not spend it on imaginary trucks. The likelihood of me winning the lotto are about the same as anyone getting a Cybertruck anytime soon, after all. But Erin? I hear you say. That money would go straight to Elon Musk! He would get nothing but positive publicity! It would help him and this ridiculous truck get made!
To which I say, exactly. After watching Musk take L after L on his acquisition of Twitter in only the past week or so, I’m beginning to realize giving him what he wants might be the most entertaining scenario possible at this point. Indeed, perhaps such a publicly grand purchase from a former naysayer of a fleet of dystopian mega trucks might actually force Musk to put his money where his mouth is and produce the damn thing. Or at least more than one of the damn thing. Revealed in 2019, production plans for the truck have been delayed every year since then. Now, there are reports that Tesla might begin production at the end of 2023, Tesla already likely has far more than a million $100 reservations for the Cybertruck, so what’s adding a paltry 37,500 more to the pile? I’m even making it easy on Tesla by ordering the cheaper rear-wheel drive single-motor version!
Come on Tesla, I’ll put money down, but only on real hoods.
Lawrence Hodge — 18,887 Shelby GT500s
If I won the $1.5 billion lottery, a dealership wouldn’t be the first thing I ran to. I’d have to disguise myself first as to avoid mooching family members who would recognize me. Only then would I enjoy a peaceful vehicle hunt.
So, what car would I buy with that obscene amount of money? Enough Mustang Shelby GT500s to cover a small town in the midwest. About 19,000 give or take.
The 2022 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is not cheap and you probably shouldn’t expect it to be given that it’s a 760 horsepower monster of a muscle car with a near 200 mph top speed. It’s a grown man’s toy, a life-sized Hot Wheels. Excluding destination charges, a GT500 starts at $79,420. I went with no options on the GT500 because they can add up fast. In reality options would be of no consequence with this amount of money. But for the sake of this let’s keep pricing basic.
At $79,420 a pop, 18,887 GT500s cost approximately $1,500,005,540. Is it stupid to even consider something like this? Yea. Is it sinful? Probably. I’d give these things away like candy of course. And it would be great having not just a select few people enjoy a machine like a GT500.
Ryan Erik King — 6,912 Maserati MC20s
If some inept bureaucrat at the U.S. Department of the Treasury mistakenly transferred $1.5 billion into my checking account, I would immediately book a flight to Modena, Italy to purchase 6,912 Maserati MC20s. The Maserati MC20 is, in my opinion, the most-ideal European sports car currently in production. The MC20 is a mid-engine coupe weighing in at just over 3,300 pounds. Its three-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine puts out 621 horsepower.
Now, why would I want nearly seven thousand of them? Great sports cars need to be raced and pushed to their absolute limit. Sure, Maserati is building a version of the MC20 for GT2 competition, but that’s a category for track day socialites. I want them to be raced hard. If the drivers aren’t writing off five of them in a weekend, then it was a boring race. Maserati won two Formula 1 World Championships in the 1950s. The Maserati MC12 was nearly unbeatable in the 2000s. The MC20 needs to build its own racing pedigree.
Steve DaSilva — 8,849 Acura NSX Type Ses
I know, I know. Steve picked a Honda/Acura product, it’s a shocker. But the NSX Type S is far from my usual repertoire of Civics and Integras and, uh, Civics. At least, it seems to be, until you get behind the wheel. Once you’re driving it, you realize they all share one crucial factor — they can’t be measured on a spec sheet.
Yeah, all those cars have horsepower and torque and curb weight numbers. But in none of them do those matter. Each car presents an experience, and the Type S is the apex of the art form. Raucous power, a growling engine note, the sound of a turbo spooling directly behind your head. It’s addicting. I want one, and then I want 8,848 more to loan out to anyone who wants to try. It’s an experience everyone deserves to feel.
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