The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis

I don't want to make anybody feel bad about their wheels, but a car just sold for $5.5 million.

It was Carrol Shelby's 1966 Shelby Cobra "Super Snake". It has twin superchargers on a 427, giving it over 800 horsepower, meaning it can go from 0-60 mph in about three seconds. For perspective's sake, your Cavalier goes from 0-20 in about four seconds.

Anyway, since it was the personal car of perhaps the greatest (certainly the most famous) muscle car guy ever, the personal Shelby Cobra of Shelby himself, the vehicle is literally a one-of-a-kind collector's piece. One other Cobra "Super Snake" (meaning it had twin super chargers) was built for Bill Cosby, but it was wrecked --not by Cosby -- years ago.

Cobras of any kind, by the way, are exceedingly rare. You've probably never even seen a real one -- most are fiberglass kit cars. Accordingly, most Cobras go for somewhere in the $300,000 range and up, depending mostly on what the car was used for.

My point is, if you're gonna drop $5.5 million on a car, this would be the car. And I'm not going to get off on a rant about how much money $5.5 million is, about how many Toyota Camrys you could buy with that (301), how many tickets to paradise you could buy with that (100,000, if we're counting Eddie Money concert tickets) or how many years' supplies of penis enlargement pills you could buy with that (22,921 years' worth of "Endowmax"). I don't want to get into all that.

I am curious whether the buyer, one Ron Pratt of Chandler, Ariz., who also owns a $4.32 million Futureliner van, will ever, ever, even after a thousand Endowmaxes, drive his Cobra. I'm guessing Ron, Jr. isn't taking this to prom. Senior probably has a $350,000 Bentley for that. Will he seal it in an air tight container? Put it on a spinning pedestal? Hire a full-time model to stand next to it wearing only the bill of sale?

Yeah, think of that next time the Neon blows a gasket.