GT500 Postmortem: Buyer's Remorse?

I’ve owned several what I would consider to be nice cars.  They were all “every man” cars, nothing too exotic or fancy.  The Mustang is of course one of these, you can count several on almost any drive.  The GT500 is sort of a Mustang but then it isn’t one and purchasing the GT500 had some implications that I did not expect.  What I’m referring to is the way owning one shifted people’s views of me.

I have a group of “car guy” friends and we were all kind of in the same boat, tuning and upgrading what we have and dreaming of something better.  We could all relate to each other and shoot the shit about car culture and what was happening in it.  Then I bought the GT500 and I was kind of surprised to discover I’d been kicked out of the group.  Not literally of course but the attitudes of the guys I used to talk to certainly changed towards me.  Instead of being excited and encouraging about my purchase they had a bunch of jealousy and hatred.  Two people flat out told me they were jealous, another said they hoped I wrapped it around a tree, one said they wished they had my problems, and even my brother said, “I kind of hate you.”

I really never saw this coming.  It’s not like I bought a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, it’s basically just a Mustang with some extra juice.  If I had built my Mustang GT up to 662hp with a bunch for track goodies everyone would be fine with it.  But something about purchasing the Shelby gave people the attitude that I had obtained something that they cannot and therefore I’m an asshole.

Just to be clear I’m not wealthy.  I’m not rolling in cash and on a whim decided to drop a pile of cash on a play thing.  If anyone looked at my budget they would say I should not have purchased it.  I’m going to be paying a lot of money every month for a very long time.  But I made the decision that I wanted to have this and I made the sacrifice to have this huge burden on my budget. 

I’m a car guy, cars are my hobby and passion so I did what I felt I needed to do to make me happy.  I went from a car that I was extremely bored with and a car that really had nowhere to go in regards to tuning and upgrades, to a car with loads of possibilities.  Even in stock form I have so much to learn from it.  And from an investment standpoint it’s a car that could even pass on to my kids for them to sell or whatever.

If I could do it all over again I would not buy the GT500.  Normally I don’t give a crap about what people think or say but these were my buds.  I don’t want them thinking I’m some rich twat dropping bills on whatever I want.  It’s not like that at all.  So I asked the dealer if we could forget the whole thing and just switch it all back.  They were not responsive to this idea so I guess it's mine.