Driving a supercar is one of life's more exhilerating experiences, so why are so many owners afraid doing just that? Let's explore.
Our reason for being is to give our community a reason to drive. Something on a Sunday morning that makes you want to set your alarm for 5 am and blast across the countryside with a group of like-minded enthusiasts, just for the sake of it. That’s what these cars were intended for, but the miles that come with it can lead to a strange phenomenon called mileage anxiety.
Even if your car isn’t a total garage queen, it can affect us all. It creeps into your mind what will happen to the value of your lightweight Ferrari if you tick over 10,000 miles and all of a sudden, you try to be a bit more sparing with your usage, maybe you’ll take the daily to a static event that’s a hundred miles up the motorway, but to me, it is a travesty that anyone buys such a car to lock away in a garage, and hearing talk of ‘keeping the mileage down’ is bordering on insulting to people who could only ever dream of owning such a car.
So, why is mileage anxiety an issue? Well, the market dictates that it’s an issue, and that is the problem. The fact that mileage has a significant impact on value unfortunately can’t be escaped. Taking a look at the 458 Speciale market shows just how much importance the market puts on low mileage. A 2015 car with just 1,800 miles is for sale at Dick Lovett Swindon for £389,990. A short scroll descending down the price range is a 2014 car with 7,750 miles for £339,900. So 6,000 miles, a number easily reachable in a year if you do a tour or two and use it on odd weekends, could shed 50 grand from the value of your car.
With that on your mind, it’s easy to see how you could become precious of mileage, but that needs to be out of your mind. You’ve likely worked your socks off for years for something like a 458 Speciale, so you damn sure deserve to enjoy it, and given it is one of the great driver’s cars of all time, it is very sad that an amount of miles you’d do in a year without flinching in your daily is seen as such an issue on a 10-year-old car.
Imagine for a moment this wasn’t a thing. Imagine your car didn’t count its miles and they therefore had no impact on its value. What would you do? I bet you’d do that European road trip, you’d take it on more drives, and maybe you’d even use it more often to make mundane journeys more interesting.
That sadly isn’t the reality, but the experiences you have screaming up a mountain pass echoing off the rocks and the memories you create chasing your friends on track are far more valuable than any amount of depreciation. You wouldn’t decide not to go on holiday ever again because of the money you’ll lose, would you? No, you pay your money, you go, you gain a few pounds and you have a great time. So why not treat your supercar in the same way.
I think the key to this starts before you even buy the car. Firstly, buy what you like, not just what you think will hold its value. If your first thought in the buying decision is future value, you’ll never totally detach from that thought, and if you buy a car you’ve lusted after for all the right reasons, you’ll damn sure want to drive the thing.
Secondly, buy one with mileage that won’t put you off using it in future. It’s all well and good buying a delivery mileage time capsule, but how perfect it is will almost certainly make you precious, and the premium you paid for such a car will vanish as soon as you nip to the shops. I’m not for a second advising you buy the cheapest, highest-mileage car you can find to generate views on YouTube, but buying something that has already been enjoyed and looked after will give you more reason to continue doing the same.
If you’re a true petrolhead, you buy what you like and you enjoy it. If it goes up in value, great, if not, it’s a small price to be paid for the memories that will last a lifetime, and whilst I can’t technically prove this, I can be fairly certain no one ever laid on their deathbed proud of how few miles their Ferrari had!
