(I’m working on a “Theories of Value” essay for this weekend, but since it will likely refer heavily to something I wrote a full 13 years ago, here’s Wonderwall, I mean… one of my favorite TTAC columns from 2012. Updated/edited ever so slightly — jb)
In a former life as an occasional participant on the fringes of the ol’ illegal street racing, I was a member of an “underground message board” where matches were set up, smack was talked, grammar was tortured, you know the deal, right? The board was well-known for being completely cop/narc-free, largely because the cops didn’t care about two community-college dropouts racing 15-second Hondas behind a grocery store in the sticks at two in the morning and then creating twenty-eight-page forum threads detailing their particular excuses for losing. In fact, until some GTO-driving halfwit managed to kill himself and cripple an innocent woman traveling the other way on the freeway, it was pretty much open season for 40-rolls on the freeways of Columbus, Ohio.
But I digress, so we shall return to the topic at hand. There was a fellow vaguely known as “Concrete Sam” on the boards, some mouth-breathing driveway-pourer who had managed to funnel his entire career’s earnings into a tuned-up C5 Corvette. His “signature” on the boards was “THE VETTE GETS THEM WET — Call me for all your concrete and masonary (sic) needs”. Crass, but honest. You know what you’re getting with Concrete Sam. He has a Vette. It is popular with his chosen genre of female. Also, he is available to do actual work for actual cash, which he probably will plow into his Corvette, enabling him to win more street races, drop more panties, and ever it shall be thus. Concrete Sam is the real deal.
Imagine a spectrum of self-delusion and pretension, if you will. Concrete Sam, tirelessly filling sidewalks by day and chirpin’ in third on the mean streets by night, is on one side of that spectrum. On the other side? Why, it’s the Hublot Big Bang.
As the Reagan era came to a close and the last vestiges of disco died screaming under the relentless, atonal attack of Kurt Cobain’s Fender Jag-Stang, America’s men came to a sudden, almost universal realization: it was no longer okay for men to wear jewelry. Of any kind. Almost overnight, gold rings and sterling-silver necklaces disappeared from the public attire of the middle and upper-middle classes. Perhaps it was the always-present “preppie” influence given additional teeth by post-Carter prosperity. I really couldn’t tell you, but it happened with the kind of speed normally reserved for a change in preferred tie width. It also appears to have been a remarkably durable change; even today, only our urban disaffected wear gold chains. Even such harmless staples as the high-school class ring went from mandatory to horrifying tout suite.
Still, there was one piece of jewelry a man could wear: his watch. This made watches “hot” all of a sudden. The default watch on which one could visibly spend money was the Rolex, so everybody bought a Rolex. But once everybody had a Rolex, wearing a Rolex meant nothing.
(This part didn’t wear well, because what happened between 2012 and now was that the Chinese and Arabs got involved, and they all wanted Rolexes, so it sent values to the moon and waiting lists to the stars — jb)
The “Holy Trinity” of watchmakers — Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, and Audermars Piguet — boosted their prices into the stratosphere to ward off the proles, scarcely understanding that only the (ex-)proles had that kind of money anymore anyway. The demand for new and unique luxury watches far exceeded their supply. What happened next was an odd sort of pre-Cambrian watch explosion as old factories were reopened, meaningless old names were dusted off, and heritages were invented with the sort of free-wheeling fictional license typically reserved for a salesman’s resume. Ulysse Nardin, Bovet, Panerai: out of the Swiss graves and onto the wrists of the oligarchs!
One of the more offensive designs of the Luxury Watchpocalypse was the Hublot “Big Bang”. The recipe for a Big Bang is simple: take the same movement one finds in a $500 Hamilton Jazzmaster watch, put it in a case which is a grotesque, oversized knock-off of Gerald Genta’s designs (full disclosure: your humble author owns a titanium Ingenieur, designed by Mr. Genta) —
(Just spent $861 to have that 2006 Ingenieur serviced for the second time in 19 years. It came back utterly perfect, every scratch removed and the original factory finish reapplied — jb)
— then add a ten-dollar rubber strap to pay homage to Hublot’s “heritage” as a twenty-year-old maker of rubber-strap watches. The resulting watch is “worth” ten thousand dollars or more and is worn by such persons as Bernie Ecclestone (who did an advertisement after he was beaten and robbed of his Big Bang by some watch-ignorant thug who probably overlooked a JLC Master Compressor on the wrist of the guy next to Bernie) and Diego Maradona.
The Big Bang is the perfect “luxury watch”. Its worth consists solely of its price. It is cheap to make and contains cheap parts. Its manufacturer doesn’t even bother to fabricate a “heritage” the way the brand-disinternment crowd does. The only reason to wear a Big Bang is to advertise that one can afford to wear one. Plain and simple. They aren’t even well-made within the confines of their modest technical brief; at a very rainy Petit LeMans a few years ago, a good friend of mine endured the agony of watching his Big Bang Carbon’s face cloud up with internal condensation from an improperly-sealed case. Fifteen grand for a watch you can’t wear in the rain! Luckily it never rains in the Moscow EDM clubs or at David Guetta’s Ibiza DJ-in-residence gigs, or the Hublot would be entirely worthless. Hublot’s razor-sharp sense that a Big Bang is only valuable because of its sticker price finds its most sublime expression in the “Big Bang $3m”, a Big Bang which was loaded with enough diamonds and other junk to not-really-justify a price of three million dollars. Apparently someone was willing to buy it, which caused Hublot to release the “Big Bang $5m” this past year in search of the proverbial bigger fool.
Not everyone is so readily fooled, however, so Hublot and other watchmakers are busy CAD-creating their own “manufacture movements” to replace the generic ETA/Sellita/Valjoux movements currently found in their products. In this, the Cretaceous period of watch enthusiasm, the ability to engineer and manufacture one’s own mechanical watch movement is essential for “credibility”. Not that the genuine prestige watchmakers all used their own movements anyways, but there’s a certain amount of Cadillac-at-the-Nurburgring idiocy going on: Rolex makes their own movements, and they are a respected brand, so we need to have our own movements as well, even more complicated and feature-packed, and then we will be more respected than Rolex.
There’s just one little problem with that strategy. The proliferation of quick-bake “manufacture” movements is creating an entire generation of hugely expensive, amazingly complicated, completely “bespoke” watches which will be impossible to fix. Most watch repairmen can fix the ETA 2892 movement found in affordable Swiss watches, and most watch repairmen can fix a Rolex because they are numerous and well-documented, but can anybody fix a Grand Complication Tourbillon watch from some company which was in business for three years, selling watches at $150,000 a pop to Chinese entrepreneurs, before going bankrupt and disappearing?
Of course not. These watches, which can’t match a eleven-dollar Taliban graduation watch for accuracy, are also imperfectly ticking down the seconds to their own deaths. That’s good! They are even more perfect as luxury items than the original Hublot Big Bangs, because they are ephemeral. There’s something unpleasantly Protestant about a Rolex, you see. One might wear it for a lifetime, or buy it used, or simply purchase it affordably on the used market —
(Rueful laugh at current used Rolex prices — jb)
— and enjoy it for a long time. It isn’t a perfect statement of immediate, current, present wealth. A Rolex or Omega might cost as much as a Ulysse Nardin, but how can one be sure that one just bought it for a large sum of cash on the barrelhead? It might be old, or refurbished! It isn’t a true luxury good unless it expires, the same way a trip to Spain expires, the same way a week in a five-star hotel expires. Only then is it completely unnecessary, totally flashy, utterly ephemeral.
My Porsche 993 is like my Omega Speedmaster Broad Arrow. I bought them both lightly used for a fair price. I’ve maintained them, had them refurbished when necessary, kept them up to spec. They both appear reasonably new, even though they are not. I expect to give — or leave — them both to my son, who will take the uncomplicated ignition key of the Porsche and the polished wooden box of the Omega some time around his eighteen birthday, I expect.
(He wanted a plane, not a Porsche — and although I’ve given him a half-dozen watches, he mostly wears his Garmin Forerunner 165 Music because he can, ya know, run with it — jb)
Neither is a simple machine, but they are well-understood and can be fixed correctly when required. Neither is a marker of wealth in 2012, and they will be even less so in fifteen years.
(Oh, GOD — how did I not predict the “every jerkoff in America buys a 993 for top dollar” phenomenon? At one point, there were five morons at the insurance company who had all paid serious money for them. Also, the Speedmaster is now worth $5500 against the flat two grand I paid for it in 2005 — jb)
There’s a simple, mechanical, tangible pleasure in touching and using them both. They exist as worthwhile objects in their own right, farther and farther away from sociological meaning as the years pass. They’ve also both stopped depreciating.
My Boxster S, on the other hand — well, the other day, I heard it groaning. Oh, how it moaned as I drove around the Wendy’s parking lot. Off to the internet to find out that the Boxster is known for eating power steering pumps. It also requires that the fluid be frequently topped-off. I confess that after just 42,000 miles on the car I hadn’t considered its power-steering needs. The power steering pump is $375. Quite a bit of money for something that can’t last 42,000 miles. If a Hyundai Accent had a power-steering pump failure at 42,000 miles I’d call it an unreliable piece of shit. Still. I’d better fill the reservoir and see if that helps.
I’ve detailed the steps below to check the power steering fluid on a 2004 Boxster S. I want you to read them, and consider what Porsche’s own opinion was of the Boxster’s likely durability when they designed the car. Is this a car which will persist for thirty years?
Unlatch the top and open it to the approximate half position. At this point, the metal cover for the top will be cantilevered away from the body and the fabric top will be half-folded.
Reach into the car and find the snap-ball connector which keeps the top attached to the body. This piece feels flimsier than a Suntour derailleur clamp. Pop it off.
Go to the other side of the car and do the same thing.
There is a plastic/vinyl sheet which is held taut by the top mechanism on one side and two cheap looking plastic clips on the other. Unlatch the plastic clip closest to you. DO NOT BREAK IT. If you do, your top won’t work any more.
Go the other side and do the same thing.
On the passenger side of the car, push the now-freed glass rear window up and reach down until you find an electrical connector, similar to a computer hard-drive connector. Squeeze it to unlatch it.
There is one plastic rotary latch on each side of the top of the carpeted subwoofer. Yes, you have to remove the subwoofer to check the power steering fluid. Unlatch your side.
And the other.
Lift the subwoofer assembly out of the car. Don’t scratch your $3,600 GT Silver paintjob. Put it somewhere on the ground.
There are four more rotary latches to undo on the carpeted panel beneath the subwoofer. Unlatch the ones on your side.
And the other side.
Lift this flexible carpeted panel out of the car. It’s nice to have help to do this, by the way.
Now you’re confronted by a plastic/metal panel sealing the engine compartment. This, at least, has metal fasteners. Unlatch the fasteners on your side.
And the other side.
Lift this panel, which weighs about 25 pounds, off the top of the car without scratching or damaging anything. Put it somewhere. Again, nice to have help at this stage.
The power steering fluid filler and dipstick is at the very edge of the engine compartment. Unscrew and check.
Perform all the steps in reverse to reassemble. Be exceptionally careful about the snap-ball connectors. They have a limited lifespan.
Thirty-two steps. To check the power steering fluid. In a car that is well-known to require checking of that fluid on a frequent basis. If you actually need to replace the power steering pump, prepare to enter a new and exciting area of Hell itself. You’ll be lucky if that’s all you have to do. Boxsters are notorious for melting the very lines which carry the fluid to the rack. The lines are more expensive than the pump and require massive disassembly to replace.
(The next owner of my car spent seven thousand dollars addressing the eventual power steering woes — jb)
My power steering reservoir is empty. My Porsche dealership no longer carries the appropriate fluid, since this 2004 Boxster is a very old car by the standards of people who only expect their watches to last a few years. The nearest shop to have it is on the other side of the city. I’ll refill the reservoir tomorrow and see what happens. It might fix it. It might be just the first stop on a multi-thousand-dollar adventure, on a car which is still depreciating at considerable speed and which, I remind you, has under three years’ worth of use on it by commuter-Hyundai-Accent standards.
(I ended up refilling the reservoir a dozen more times before selling the car in 2017 — jb)
I’ve been reading the Paris Auto Show coverage. Most of it was written by people who were flown to Paris by a manufacturer or an exceptionally generous media conglomerate. These people will never own a Porsche. They certainly won’t ever have to take personal responsibility for diagnosing and fixing one. They swallow the sewage-like PR poured down their throats about how wonderfully “upscale” and “luxurious” and “desirable” the Panamera and the 991 and the others are. They don’t ever stop to consider what it means when a company requires thirty-two steps to perform a basic fluid check. Many of them don’t even own cars. Very few of them could fix a car themselves or even perform an oil change.
Modern Porsches, just like the Hublot Big Bangs and their ilk, are ephemeral. Fleeting. Fake. Faux. Luxury. Junk. The pleasure of purchase is all you get. After that it’s a full-tilt rush to buy the next thing. Their Eloi owners won’t think about the Morlocks who own, maintain, race, and enjoy old Porsches. We don’t exist to them. They are simply chasing the next brightest thing. An unfixable watch, worn to a meaningless meeting and left in a disposable “luxury” car. We know it’s luxury because they tell us so, with every press release, with every five-star hotel used for the first drive, with every Chinese-sewn-junk branded polo shirt left on the hotel bed.
The old Porsches, the old Mercedes-Benzes, they had some integrity, some value for the Morlocks, for the third owners, for the hobbyists. They endured. They were like old Rolexes; expensive to run but durable by design. That’s no longer desired, if it ever was. Today’s “luxury” car is just like today’s “luxury” watch. The value of the thing is the price, the presence, the heavy flame-surfaced tank-like offensiveness of an X6 imposing your prosperity on your neighbor’s fragile psyche like a heavy gold chain worn around one’s neck a thousand years ago.
It won’t last. It cannot last. It is a house built on sand. I want to believe that the tide will turn, that we may value vehicles once again for their integrity, their construction, their durability, their real-world performance. The day may come when the Panamera’s successor meets the same icy disdain among the upper-middle-class as the downsized Fleetwood did in 1985. The purveyors of instant junk may push too far, too hard, dare too much, fly too high, crash too hard. The ultimate status symbol may become an old 560SEL, that million-mile aerosedan from another era. It may become the 993, that perfected expression of the air-cooled ethic. It might be an E34 BMW M5, the last six-cylinder gasp of the true M-car. Aw, hell. It could be a C6, for all I know. Concrete Sam could wake up and find that, against all odds, the Vette now gets them all wet.
(See you tomorrow, where we will continue the discussion on the paid-subscriber side — jb)
I read this upon initial publication (~13 years ago), and I broadly agreed at the time. Plus, I had just purchased a Porsche 993 with my first bonus.
What I failed to recognize at age 23 - but do now as I slide into middle age - is that the awful, terrible, evil, stupid, greedy, and, like, totally undeserving Lizard People with fake and gay “jobs” who can and do buy the new thing (so that the virtuous and admirable blue collar workers and sys admins and so on can one day appreciate the item post depreciation) have more money than time.
There is something new available. It could be fun. It could be titillating. It could lose all financial value the moment the wire leaves the buyer’s bank account. That’s fine, because they can afford it.
Exempli Gratia:
There’s a new Ferrari on the scene: The 849 Testarossa. I have no clue what the “849” moniker signifies.
One guy I know - who has 6-7 Ferraris, has a minority position in multiple Ferrari dealers, and has a GMA T.33 incoming - had a meltdown. He called the car an “abortion,” harangued the designer - Flavio Manzoni - on Instagram, and … threatened to sell his Ferraris and even his RACE shares. Even quit Ferrari Challenge! OMG!
He works for a living. He has done very well, but he’s cheap, and the primary appeal of a car to him is (0) how hard it is to get, (1) and how much it has appreciated.
The other guy is quiet, low-key and has 30 Ferraris. He could make a killing in data centers right now given his background, but he has enough and no heirs to worry about. He told me he thought the car was disappointing, but he plans to order a Tailor Made spec - which would be over $1MM in all likelihood - anyway, “just in case.” Just in case.
The latter’s net worth is probably 15x the net worth of the former. But the latter is nearly 70 years old, and the former is only 58. The latter has vastly more money but likely less time.
So he doesn’t need to care about the Protestant work ethic stuff.
What changed, in the interim, is that the psychic benefits of owning a Rolex, or a 993, have gone beyond one's immediate circle into Instagram, where it is traded for the fleeting envy of strangers. We are poorer for it.