Here Are All The Cool Cars Elon Musk Could Have Bought Instead Of Spending $474,000,000 On Political Ads

The midterm elections are over. If you live in a swing state like I do, you've probably been inundated with political attack ads, texts, and phone calls for the last several months. This has been the most expensive election in U.S. history, and much of the blame for that can be laid on the shoulders of the richest man in the world, and one-time Jalopnik contributor, Elon Musk. After Joe Biden spurned him in 2021, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has become the single largest political donor in history, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in support of Republican political campaigns. According to recent reports Musk spent an incredible 474 million American greenbacks nationwide, with some $200 million of that spent supporting Ken Paxton's campaign for U.S. Senate in his adopted home state of Texas. 

Megadonor Musk's efforts were all in vain as every one of the political campaigns he supported in swing states failed. With economic inequality, an incredibly unpopular war, and AI data centers among the top concerns for American voters in this election, it certainly feels like these results are a referendum on Musk himself. Musk spent the weeks leading up to the election using his social media platform Twitter to call Texas Senator Elect James Talarico a "far left extremist" when he wasn't using it to promote his AI chatbot or retweet the thoughts of vile bigots. 

So, after all that, it seems the world's only trillionaire decided to throw away half a billion dollars on unelectable candidates and an extremely unpopular agenda. $474 million is a small fraction of Elon's net worth, just under half a tenth of a percent, in fact. He probably won't even notice the money is gone, but the fact remains that he could have spent that money instead on something much cooler. He could have bought 6,423 brand new base model Corvettes, for example. He could have given each of the 500 people living in SpaceX company town Starbase, Texas, 12 Corvettes as a gift. 

What if he had grander ambitions than Corvettes? Let's look into it. 

Back in August, if Musk had found himself at Monterey Car Week instead of pumping money into his super pacs, he could have really cleaned house and built himself a really cool collection of some of the most important cars in history. As the CEO of the world's most valuable car company, Musk must have at least some interest in cars, right? He did own a McLaren F1 at one point, for example, so maybe there is still a car guy hiding in there. Auction house RM Sotheby's recently set a record for collector car auctions in Monterey, with more money changing hands that weekend than ever had in history. The wealthy car collectors are still flush with cash and willing to spend, it seems. The sale was led by the controversial $40 million Ferrari Luce charity auction, a rare $34.655 million McLaren F1 GTR sale, and an $18.7 million 1963 Corvette Grand Sport. In total the auction pushed 199 lots across the dais and nearly half of them were million-plus sales. What was that record breaking number? $380 million, meaning Musk could have used his political contribution slush fund to buy every single one of them and still have money left over for transportation, taxes, and registration. 

If Musk really wants to be as popular as it seems he is desperate to be, he could have spent the summer driving around in his new Aston Martin Valkyrie Spider, Talbot-Lago T26 Record Cabriolet, Mercer Raceabout, or Lamborghini Miura P400. The point is, he could have bought whatever he wanted, but instead of something cool or useful, what he wanted was Ken Paxton. 

What if he wanted to own the most expensive collector cars of all time? For just the money he spent in Texas he could easily have bought the one-of-two Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR "Uhlenhaut Coupe" which sold in 2022 for $142,000,000. In fact, for his 2026 political campaign contributions, Musk could have also purchased the Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Stromlinienwagen ($52,960,000), a Ferrari 330 LM/250 GTO ($51,705,000), another 250 GTO ($48,405,000), a Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe ($42,905,000), the aforementioned Ferrari Luce, and yet two more Ferrari 250 GTOs ($38,500,000 and $38,115,000 respectively). That's the top eight most expensive cars ever sold in history. Or, you know, one feckless midterm election media buy blitz. Which would you rather have?

Let's say Elon woke up one day and felt like he wanted to do something magnanimous in an effort to repair his reputation with the American people. What could he have done with his $474,000,000 political contributions that would have instead helped the average American feel better about their country and place in it? Auto loan debt is pretty bad right now, reaching some $1.7 trillion. Obviously he couldn't clear the table on every car loan, and it would be absurd to expect him to. That said, Texas has been hit harder by auto loan debt than any other state with around 10% of borrowers in the state more than 30 days behind on their payments. How much goodwill could he garner for himself and Tesla if he were to forgive all Tesla loans in the state? That might be a good start. 

Half a billion dollars buys a whole lot of goodwill for a man. Maybe he could start subsidizing grocery stores in poor Texas neighborhoods. Or pushing to fund the state's unreliable and undermaintained power grid. He could set up a fund to install EV chargers in apartment complexes or on the street, further growing Tesla's potential customer base in the state. Man, there are just so many better uses of that money than attack ads claiming James Talarico isn't manly enough to represent Texas. 

My biggest takeaway from this election cycle is that America's wealthiest donor is spending his tremendous wealth trying to buy politicians. Thankfully, this time anyway, it seems that the voters have rebuked that effort. It certainly should be one of the priorities of this new crop of elected representatives to remove the ability for one man to wield this much potential political power, regardless of whether it was successful or not. It seems Americans are desperate for some kind of financial relief, whether that's reducing gas prices by ending the war in Iran, combating inflation, or making healthcare affordable, rather than fighting ridiculous culture wars. While those should be major priorities for the Democrats, campaign finance reform should probably be on the docket somewhere. 

Elon seems to have made himself incredibly unpopular across the last half decade simply by aligning himself with MAGA Republicans. He's going to have a long uphill battle to revamp his image. Maybe he should just disappear from public life for a decade or so. Or buy a few hundred vintage collector cars at auction and simply give them to random American car enthusiasts. Either way, he should probably stop tweeting.