One thing that surely all automotive enthusiasts love to do is to come up with hypothetical situations for which cars are the answer, and then debate with friends or followers about who has the best (or worst) answers and ideas. That’s part of the reason we love doing our What Car Should I Buy? series so much here at Jalopnik — we get to give our thoughts on specific car-buying situations, coming up with recommendations that are always good but often also bad.
Earlier this week me and my wonderful coworkers were having a Slack conversation that I am now foisting onto you: If you were given $250,000 and you could only spend it on a new car (or new cars plural), what would you buy? To be clear, you cannot spend this money on a used car, or something that’s on Bring a Trailer or Cars & Bids even if it’s a 2026 model with a couple miles on it. You have to walk into a car dealership and spend that quarter-million on a custom order. But, it’s okay if you spend that money on multiple cars, as long as you don’t go over the dollar limit.
What I’d buy
This thought experiment was spurred by Andy recently having a Mercedes-AMG G63 press car that came in at just under $250,000, which some of our colleagues thought was absurd and not worth it. Not me, though. I would spend my hypothetical money on a Mercedes G-wagen. As much as I love the G63, though, I would go for the electric G580. I just spec’d one out on Mercedes’ website — finished in the same Desert Silver paint as my CLS — and it came in at $208,990 almost fully loaded. If I were actually buying one in real life I’d have enough custom options to hit that $250k mark, but I guess I’ll spend my remaining $41,010 on a Hyundai Elantra N.
But what about you? What brand new car or cars would you spend a magic sum of $250,000 on? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll round up my favorite answers later this week. Bonus points if you share screenshots or the link to your online configuration, especially if said configurator has a price attached.
