"Don't think of it as a racetrack. Think of it as a private road." That's what the Rolls-Royce driving instructors told us as we were about to drive Wraiths onto the new Thermal Track in La Quinta, California, about 15 minutes from Palm Springs. (Well, one third of the track, as the Thermal Club hasn't finished building the rest yet.) There are of course two ways to interpret their comments. The first is that a vehicle like the Wraith simply doesn't belong on a track. The other would be, well, I'm not sure your wallet's fat enough to fully grok it. A quick glance at the Thermal's website reveals that its slogan is "Private Pavement." One has to imagine that anyone who buys a Wraith - base price $288,600, as tested $360,325 - views most of the world as private pavement. At least potentially. Cars this freakishly expensive remind me of when David Letterman was a guest on Jerry Seinfeld's Web series, "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee." Dave's upset at all the other people in the restaurant and wants them to leave. Jerry says, "We don't own this place." To which Letterman grins and replies, "We can change that, though, can't we?" The point of having too much money might be to remake the world how you'd like it.
That sort of sentiment leads me to the night before we got to Thermal. I was invited to stay in a 5000-square-foot Italian-ish villa located in a private community/golf paradise called the Madison Club. It's so high-end that I found it a little hard to take. Weeks before I showed up I was asked what sort of things I like to drink. When I walked into the villa's kitchen, every type of booze I mentioned was sitting on the counter, including semi-obscure stuff such as 23-year-old Ron Zacapa rum. I mentioned I like cigars and within five minutes I was holding a Cohiba (a real one), a Padrón, and a pretty decent Romeo y Julietta Churchill. Here's the real kicker: One cigar had a Connecticut wrapper, one was a Habana, and the third was a Maduro. Clearly not their first rodeo. I promised I wouldn't name members' names, but there's a very famous cigar-chompin' action star that's a member. Maybe two. "We're not in the saying 'no' business," the club pro who acted as my tour guide explained. I can't remember a moment when a staff member wasn't smiling at me. At dinner I confirmed that yes, I do like beef jerky. When I woke up the next day at 7 a.m. there was a pound of it on the coffee table. Like membership at the Thermal Club, you're invited to buy a house at the Madison Club. You don't sign up. Oh, the roughly $4.5 million villa I was in was a cheap little guy. There was a 20,000-square-foot monstrosity on the market for $19 million. I mention this fancy, fantasy-world type stuff because if you have the eight-figure net worth typically connected to Wraith buyers, the above is your reality.
