The Experience of Buying 27 Exotic Cars in 4 Years

This millionaire has a long list of exotic cars under his belt and tells what he’s learned while building his collection.

YouTube channel VINwiki has been building a video collection of car enthusiasts telling their stories for a while now. Recently, we heard Ryan Hardwick’s story of how he ended up racing in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo series. Now, he sits down to talk about his experiences buying a lot of exotic cars.

Hardwick is a partner in Mountain Motorsports. He founded the company in 1999 with his lifelong friend Justin Price. Ryan opens the video by talking about his first exotic being a Lamborghini Gallardo. Some businesses keep their first dollar bill earned, but these guys obviously have larger goals:

“The Gallardo was the first exotic car. I sold that to my best friend, my business partner, the guy who runs Mountain Motorsports with me, Justin Price, and he still owns the car today. We’ve both promised between the two of us we’ll never let it go. It’s a special car and we’ll try to keep that one.”

Hardwick particularly likes Lamborghini but isn’t into just the one nameplate. He’s owned higher end Porsches as well as cars from McLaren, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, and BMW. Perhaps the most interesting of his experiences is with Ferrari owners and Ferrari itself. Much as he respects Ferrari’s abilities and heritage, he’s not impressed with the people and the culture.

“I’ve met people from racing, I’ve met people in their corporate offices, and I’ve met some people at the dealerships. There’s a common culture at Ferrari that just doesn’t sit well with me. They’re a very prideful group of people which I respect, but there’s this type of arrogance from factory to racing down to the dealerships.”

He then goes on to talk about the hoops Ferrari expects customers to jump through to own the car they actually want. The Ferrari he currently owns is a 458 Speciale he bought used because he just didn’t want to deal with Ferrari itself.

ALSO SEE: Road Tripping With A Ferrari GTC4Lusso

He does have really good things to say about McLaren though. He particularly loves the 720S and rates it as one of the best cars on the planet. His heart though is with Lamborghini as a brand. He currently drives an Aventador SV Roadster and plans to be a car he keeps indefinitely. He says, “It’s not the best handling car, not the fastest car, but it’s just the car.”

To us, that shows the mark of a true enthusiast of exotic cars. It’s not his favorite because it wins any type of measuring contest. It’s his favorite because it’s the car that suits him. For that reason, we hope to here more stories from Hardwick on VINwiki in the future.

Ian Wright

Ian Wright has been a professional writer for two years and is a regular contributor to Corvette Forum, Jaguar Forum, and 6SpeedOnline, among other auto sites.

His obsession with cars started young and has left him stranded miles off-road in Land Rovers, being lost far from home in hot hatches, going sideways in rallycross cars, being propelled forward in supercars and, more sensibly, standing in fields staring at classic cars. His first job was as a mechanic and then trained as a driving instructor before going into media production.

The automotive itch never left though, and he realized writing about cars is his true calling. However, that doesn’t stop him from also hosting the Both Hand Drive podcast.

Ian can be reached at bothhanddrive@gmail.com