‘Tis the giving season when it’s also fun to imagine things that, at least from a distance, look like they’d be cool to have for yourself.
For instance, imagine showing up for your high school reunion and stealing the show because of the car you arrive in, getting into your personal submarine at a business beach event, or having a home that both reflected the world as it is and was so awesome people you had over for dinner would talk about visiting it as a life-changing experience.
Dreaming is inexpensive, and with interest rates as high as they are, it’s probably an excellent alternative to buying what you can’t afford. As long as you’re dreaming, you have no monetary limits, so here is my list of five gifts that are probably all more fun to dream about than to actually own. Some of these aren’t even for sale, but you can still dream about them.
Like my last column, there won’t be a designated product of the week because these all would qualify for that selection.
Here they are, listed in no particular order of preference.
1. H2OME
Looking at this underwater house reminds me of the scene in the first James Bond movie, “Dr. No,” where Bond is looking out the window of the dining room, which is underwater. Dr. No says, “Two million dollars, that’s what everyone wants to know, how much it cost, two million dollars,” and the view isn’t nearly as good as the view out of this home’s bedroom windows.
This 3,600 square-foot H2OME has underwater living space to spare.
H2OME | Image Credit: U.S. Submarine Structures
If you’re worried about global warming and related flooding, this home is perfect for you because it’s already underwater and doing just fine. If you’re on a budget, you could get an affordable Missile Silo home, but it’s a bit of a fixer-upper priced at $550,000 and likely would be a nightmare to remodel.
As impressive homes go, H2OME ‘s price of $10M seems almost affordable though it would be incredibly impractical if you didn’t also have a high-speed amphibious plane to commute in. But wait. Many of us are working remotely now, so who says you have to leave? Amazon Prime may have trouble delivering to this address, but you could train a dolphin to collect your goodies. What else are you going to do to pass the time?
2. Regent Seaglider
Since you need some way to get to and from your undersea paradise, why not go green with the Regent Seaglider? This all-electric plane carries up to 12 passengers — in case you want to pick folks up for dinner or need the room to buy food for a year — and it is undergoing trials as we speak.
Viceroy 12-passenger Seaglider | Image Credit: Regent
Preorders reportedly are brisk, approaching $7 billion. They’ve presold 365 of them, putting the price at around $20 million each (hey, we’re dreaming, right?), and this is the small brother to a larger 100-seat plane also being designed.
Imagine pulling up to your undersea mansion in one of these puppies, nearly silent, very green. It can be charged by tidal generators, which should work better than solar panels or windmills, and it’ll get you to shore and back again in style.
3. James Bond DB5 Goldfinger Aston Martin Reproduction
While most of us would struggle to buy the $17,000 wall hanging for this car, for a paltry $4.8 million, you can have Aston Martin build a new one.
Movie cars never were meant to be driven, and the original DB5 would be a pain to own, but a new one would be relatively reliable, and there will only be 25 of them built, making it unlikely any of us will see any of them.
Imagine being out on a date, being cut off, and saying, “he has no idea whom he is messing with,” and opening the center compartment with the weapons switches. Imagine pulling up to your high school reunion with this car. All the guys who thought you were a loser in high school now think very differently of you and lust to ride in the car, but you only take your real friends out for a ride.
This car won’t just turn heads; it’ll likely get you in the local paper when you show up driving it (don’t forget to let reporters know where you’ll be). That old prom queen and king can just watch from the sidelines and question their life choices as you drive off in the car that most didn’t even dream of owning until they saw it.
4. Rimac Nevera
I know the Aston Martin is probably a boomer dream car, and younger dreamers are likely to fancy something a tad newer and without automatic weapons. That would be the Rimac Nevera which allegedly has a whopping 258 mph (412 kph) top speed. It’s the fastest car in the world, and given it is an electric car; it’ll do the quarter mile in 8.5 seconds.
Not only is it the fastest electric car, but it also apparently holds the record for the fastest car tested at the Papenburg track in Germany, one of the few test courses that can handle this kind of speed. Here is a video of the car going 258 mph:
The Rimac Nevera does 0-60 in 1.85 seconds — about a second faster than the fastest Tesla, which is no slouch.
Because this car “only” costs $2.1 million, it’s arguably the least expensive item on this list. Imagine pulling up to a stoplight and having the guy in the souped-up Mustang next to you revving his engine as he watches you vanish in the distance before his car has even moved 10 feet off the line. High-speed gas-powered cars struggle to get close to two seconds 0-60 times, even when configured as dragsters.
A Ferrari driver’s date would even be impressed and likely laugh a bit at the perplexed look resulting from seeing you silently zoom off at one-third the speed of sound. Granted, you’d probably have to replace the tires after one run, but it’s a fantasy, so who cares?
5. Aurora-3C Personal Submersible
While living in the H2OME underwater home would be amazing, you can’t exactly take the dog out for a walk. However, being on the ocean floor would mean you could go for a drive in your personal submarine. The Aurora-3C is an amazing three-person submersible — and you want the three-person version so you can take your dog along for the ride.
You can specify one of two depth options, 460 or 1000 meters. Since I’m dreaming, I’d go with the 1000 because money is no object in a dream, and I want something that can successfully avoid Spectre should they think I’m 007 and come calling (thanks to my dream car), and this could make Saturday evening cruises memorable.
Imagine your wife finishing up chatting with some of her friends at a beach party as she’s saying she is heading home, only to have your sub-surface appear out of nowhere to take her on board. Her new-found friends’ eyes would likely pop out of their heads.
With a top speed of three knots, it isn’t setting any undersea speed records, but with a 96-hour mission time (it uses oxygen and CO2 scrubbers), it gives you plenty of time to vanish should your in-laws suddenly show up. The price is $3.5 million for the 460-meters version.
Wrapping Up
Given inflation and interest rates, we should likely be conserving rather than spending a ton of money this year. But based on the season’s sales numbers so far, none of us, including myself, have done that.
This spending leaves us broke when it comes to getting stuff for ourselves. Still, we can dream, and rather than dreaming about something we can almost afford but won’t buy, why not dream about things we’ll never be able to afford and won’t buy? That makes for far more pleasant dreams.
Here’s hoping the rest of your holiday shopping goes well and that you enjoyed this short trip into my dreams. Maybe one or more of these dreams become yours.
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