OK, here’s the scenario. Nine friends all want to own supercars. Nine friends can’t afford to buy a supercar. Late in the summer of 2009 nine friends decide to chip in together and share one supercar. Will they all still be friends left at the end of this?

It sounded like a great idea at the time but there tends to be a lot of testosterone in the air when there’s a supercar involved in the conversation and what would our wives say? Moreover, how do nine men share a big outlay all year round without ending up being involved in perpetual squabbles? Knowing a little about buying cars, albeit two-grand sheds, I went ahead with the idea and was given the task of searching for “the” supercar. Our dream car was still very much just an idea so before opening the laptop, we all had to decide what to go for.

Fast forward four months to November 2009, and a decision had finally been made. It wasn’t easy, especially as so many of us wanted different things and the childhood memories of our bedroom walls covered in Athena car posters only clouded opinion further. Nine are still in yet calling the shots on who has it when is still to be decided, and there’s still one (me) who has to make up the cash outlay. To cut a long story short, many pints later, we’ve all agreed on the Lamborghini Gallardo. With ten-grand each our budget doesn’t sound a lot for a used Gallardo and adding up the maths there could be so many other great supercars to choose from. It wasn’t a clean, nine vote decider either. In fact six of us decided Lamborghini whilst the rest chose either a Ferrari 355 or a Nissan GTR. However, with some insider knowledge on Gallardo’s from one of the group, the running costs, servicing and reliability on one of these just won the vote.

So, where do you start? Buying a cheap run around or writing about our Bargain of the Week is obviously a lot easier than purchasing a £50-grand plus Lamborghini. My first port of call was the Lamborghini owners club. Needless to say there wasn’t much for sale but I was given a few pointers and emails of specialists who might be able to help. Early Gallardo’s are hard to come by but having spoken to several enthusiasts and dealers, our budget wasn’t that far out. The possibility of owning a supercar now seemed to becoming a faint possibility.

January 2010. Back in November nine grown men all decided to chip in five grand each to buy a supercar. Having done some research, nine have now become ten and owning a supercar, albeit for maybe only three or four weekends a year, has become an exciting possibility. Will I regret this or savour every single second?

Stay tuned.

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