I always thought I was a sports car guy.
Dad managed Goodyear dealers while I was growing up, so I was always around cars and IndyCar racing. I loved the beauty, noise, and power of sports cars. As an adult, I just kinda assumed that was always what I was into – and who knows, maybe it always was, but I changed over time.
This summer, a perfect storm of little coincidences all hit at once, and as they kept coming and coming, they made me stop and question whether I was actually really still a sports car guy or not. Brace yourself, it’s a wall of bullet points:
- I rode the Nürburgring in a Porsche 911 GT3 RS Manthey driven by a professional race car driver, and that absolved me of any interest in owning a really fast car. That car was spectacular, but it really only made sense in the hands of a trained, experienced professional – it’d take me years of work to get to the level where I could utilize a 911 GT3 RS’s capabilities, and even then, it’d only be on closed tracks.
- I sold my 1999 Boxster to a local friend. I had my hands full with a bunch of work projects, so this fun project had sat in a storage warehouse for months without me making any progress. I decided I could always get another Boxster easily if I wanted to restart that project, and it didn’t make sense to keep spending $100/month to leave it in storage, plus insure it.
- One day, I needed to take Yves to the airport, and I realized we didn’t have a single car that could carry two full size suitcases. I had to drop the top on the Rolls, pick the suitcases up over the car body, and lower them into the back seats, beating the bejeezus out of the leather in the meantime.
- We had quite a few trips coming up in the fall from Vegas to LA, San Diego, and Telluride, and I was either gonna have to rent a car, or fly and then rent a car when we got there, and I hate dealing with that when we’re talking about a relatively short distance. It’s so much nicer to just toss stuff in the car the night before, and then hop in and hit the road whenever we wake up in the morning.
- We temporarily lost 2 of our 3 garage spaces due to a home renovation project. I borrowed 2 garage spots from a neighbor who summered out of town, but the clock was ticking, and I would need alternate arrangements within a month or two.
- I found out Hagerty had canceled my collector car insurance months prior, without notifying me. I started shopping around for collector car insurance, and in the meantime, stopped driving the old stuff (the 356 and the Honda Beat.)
- I got a crazy high offer to buy my 356 – which didn’t end up panning out, but it started a few conversations, and I realized it was time to let that go too, especially since Yves refused to ride in it due to the old-car gasoline smells. That was a really fun adventure, but definitely didn’t make any money on that one.
- I went to go take a Valley of Fire drive in the 911, and discovered that my national parks pass had expired in summer 2025 – and I hadn’t taken a single drive out there in the year since. I used to love going out there every month or two, but I’d kinda checked that box off, and I didn’t drive sports cars out there as often anymore.
- The market for used Porsche 911s exploded. The dealer offered to buy my 2-year-old Targa for pretty close to what I paid for it new. and they promptly listed it for $220k. I basically drove my dream car for a couple years for free. That’s a rare opportunity, and I had to take the money off the table and go in search of other fun experiences.
- I test drove a few 1980s Porsches and realized they didn’t really hold a new experience for me. I’d had the vintage sports car experience in a few different ways, and … it didn’t really fit with my Vegas life. If I still lived in a more temperate area like San Diego or Malibu, maybe, but the traffic in those locations was terrible anyway, taking a lot of enjoyment away from the vintage car experience.
None of those individual items was a dealbreaker, but as they kept hitting, I started asking myself, “Brent, are you really sure you’re still a sports car guy?”
I had slowly turned into a Comfy Car Guy™.
The first shift was a few years ago when I bought an old Caddy. Even that inexpensive 40-year-old car was gloriously comfortable, relaxing to drive, and beautiful. You couldn’t help but be mellow while driving that thing. You don’t rev the engine of an old Caddy, you just take things as they come, wave people in in front of you, and just generally enjoy the cool vibes.
A couple years later, when we bought a Rolls-Royce Dawn to satisfy Yves’ bucket list, I came to the realization that I really like these comfy cars. The Dawn quickly became my favorite car – not just for special occasions, but for road trips and everyday errands, too. I got to the point where I would just turn on the massaging seats as soon as I got in, even for short runs around town.
Then I got a ride in a Maybach.
After clubbing one night, a friend of ours gave us a ride home in the back of his Mercedes Maybach (pictured above.) I absolutely fell in love right away. It was soooo comfortable, so spacious, so quiet, and so loaded with cool gadgets like really good massaging seats, even massaging & ventilated lie-flat rear seats, fragrance dispensers built into the AC, a built-in champagne fridge, little wireless tablets to control everything, I could go on and on. He mentioned that he never drove it, and that they were actually looking to sell it. I thought yeah, right, whatever, I’m not a Maybach guy, and that was that.
But over the following weeks, I couldn’t get the car out of my mind.
I borrowed it for the weekend. I had expected the driving experience to be way worse – after all, the whole point of a Maybach is the rear seat limo experience. I was delighted to find out that I was completely wrong: it was peaceful and rejuvenating to drive, had amazing driver assistance tech, and it flew under the radar. It blends in perfectly in traffic – nobody notices it in either a positive or negative way, and when you’re talking about a comfy car that can eat up hundreds of miles a day when road tripping, there’s a lot to be said for that. The color was even exactly the way I would have specced it: two tone silver and black, with giant dinner plate monoblock wheels.
So now we’re a two-car family: the 2017 Rolls-Royce Dawn and the 2022 Maybach S580. (We still have the Honda Beat in the dining room – I’ll bring that back out in the fall – but I hesitate to call something a “sports car” when it has 64 horsepower.)
Yves loves the Maybach, especially the living area in the back seats. The airline-style fold-out tray tables means she can do her makeup back there, film videos, set out a tray of food, or have a comfy video editing area with her phone and iPad. Beni (our dog) loves it because he can perch on the rear center console, look out the rear windows and forward through the windshield.
I’m not saying I’ll never own another sports car by any means! There are still a lot of sports car experiences I’d like to try, but … man, these Maybach massaging seats sure are comfy.
