Today, Elon Musk is a multibillionare whose name is synonymous with spaceships, solar panels, and high-performance electric cars. But way back in 1999, Musk was just a 28-year-old millionaire flush with money from the dot-com boom. It was an achievement he celebrated in fitting fashion: by buying a $1-million McLaren F1.
Valleywag dug up this profile of a younger, somewhat gawkier Musk, back when he'd made $400 million selling Zip2, an online publishing software for newspapers. Yes, 1999 was a long time ago.
In this video, Musk talks up X.com, the nascent online banking system that, through a number of famously profitable business transactions, begat PayPal, which in turn begat Scrooge McDuck–style money silos for Musk. "My fear is that we become spoiled brats, that we lose a sense of appreciation and perspective," Musk's then-fiancée (now ex-wife) Justine Wilson says in the video. "It's a million dollars for a car. It's decadent."
But it's also the purchase of a bona fide car guy; not only did Musk have the good taste to buy a McLaren F1, he used it as the acceleration benchmark for the astoundingly fast Tesla Model S P85D.
- Buy It Now: Mr. Bean's Twice-Wrecked McLaren F1 Is for Sale
- From the C/D Archives: Our Original Test of the Incredible McLaren F1!
- 2015 McLaren 650S Le Mans Evokes F1 GTR, Right Down to the Roof Snorkel
Somewhere, in a high-tech lair buried deep within a private mountain island, Musk is probably laughing at memories of the days when a million-dollar car seemed decadent.
This story originally appeared on roadandtrack.com via Valleywag.
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