Georgia man who bought a McLaren 570GT for $26,000 reveals what the cheapest way to own a McLaren car is

VinWiki founder Ed Bolian has revealed what he believes is the cheapest way to own a McLaren.

And it’s not all about the initial cost, as you can imagine.

Apart from maintenance, there’s another key factor, which is timing.

And McLaren 570GT owner Bolian actually used an incredibly sharp analogy.

The cheapest way to buy a McLaren

This is the problem with buying a ‘cheap’ McLaren, or a cheap luxury car in general: what you’re buying is a Matryoshka doll where each layer costs money and time.

So even if the outer layer – the price tag – is cheap, then all you’ve got nine more layers, and they’re all expensive to manage.

And if that metaphor didn’t work, let’s try another one.

For a combination of reasons – specialized parts and manufacturing, the fragility of certain components – nothing about owning the cheapest McLaren is cheap.

Even a simple oil change may end up costing a fortune.

And lest we forget, it doesn’t matter how cheap it is, you’ll still have expensive maintenance, expensive insurance, expensive road tax where it applies, and so on.

However, levity aside, VinWiki founder Bolian believes there is a way to own a reasonably affordable McLaren without losing your mind.

Or money.

This is what Ed Bolian believes

In Ed Bolian’s view, it’s all about timing.

Speaking on the Iced Coffee Hour podcast, Bolian explained that buying older, rare cars that have already passed their steepest depreciation curve is a relatively safe bet.

Partly because they will likely not depreciate any more but also because that gives you an extra budget to manage maintenance costs and repairs, which remain a ‘significant risk’.

In his case, he chose a McLaren 570GT, which wasn’t the cheapest McLaren in the world, but still sort of affordable.

He also noted – and this is particularly interesting – that some collectible cars follow a trend based on the ‘buying power’ of people who admired those cars when they were teenagers.

“The biggest criteria [sic] is always the buying power of the people who thought it was the coolest thing in the world when they were late teenagers,” he said.

In other words, what’s the buying power of the average well-off person of around 55 to 65 years of age?

Because that tells you the likely audience for the Ferrari F40, which launched in 1987, back when those people were at the age when you read magazines and put supercar posters on the wall.

Ultimately, Bolian acknowledged that there is no such thing as a cheap supercar, but assuming you can afford it, owning a bottomed-out exotic is still cheaper than buying new.

“The risk of having $30,000 in repair costs is much higher than the risk of having $30,000 in depreciation. But it’s cheaper to own than just about anything new,” he concluded.