What Should Real-Life 'Iron Man' Elon Musk Buy Next?

Image credit: MotorTrend

Tesla founder Elon Musk’s purchasing of the Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me is a very cool piece of retail therapy; especially when you consider that his £866,000 bagged him a car that doesn't even work. But then, when you’re worth $8.8bn (£5.4bn), you can afford to pay over the odds and then chuck a few more quid at it to turn it into a transforming submarine.

The question we asked ourselves, however, was what should the real-life Iron Man buy next?

Another car company?

Image Credit: Business Insider

After building Tesla from the ground up into a share price-booming brand that outsells Audi, BMW, and Mercedes in the US, petrolheads surely want to see if Musk can revive other missed car brands. Fisker? Cool cars, but the range-extender Karma is too close to his own Model S for comfort. Saab? Again, interesting brand, but it’s been bought out by the Chinese as a future electric car producer.

He could snap up some of the recently bankrupted German sports car makers, like 9ff, Weismann, or Gumpert, but that’d just leave a rich guy making cars for other rich guys – where’s the benefit to you or I? Here’s hoping he sends a goodwill cheque to Lotus though – without the Elise underpinnings, Tesla’s original Roadster would’ve been a lot longer coming.

Something aerospace-based?

Musk already has SpaceX to play with, his very own commercial spaceflight company which has docked with the International Space Station and invented this rather neat reusable take-off-and-land rocket. Unless he plans to colonise Mars (rebranded to MarsX, of course) there’s no real need to go chasing off into space and fight Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

But what about closer to land? Jet planes are pretty old hat now, having basically survived on the same brilliant design from British engineer Frank Whittle since the 1940s. If Musk got his big brain (and even bigger wallet) into gear, maybe New York could be half an hour from London after all, with Sydney reachable in your lunch break. Sounds promising, but if his Hyperloop idea is anything to go by, Musk is more likely to opensource an idea than actually start engineering a solution. And the military might get a little uneasy at the idea of a multi-billionaire inventing an aircraft which can outrun any weapon on Earth...

What about popular, civilian tech?

Let’s kick this idea into touch nice and quick. Yes, there are a few big tech companies which always seem on the brink of going down the toilet these days (the once-massive Nokia, and Blackberry spring to mind), but seriously, Musk’s intellect, investment and ambition could be better served with much cooler projects elsewhere, right?

Renewable energy would be a good game – plenty of clean electricity to charge up Teslas with, for a kick off. But Musk is a big kid – he likes superfast trains, silent cars, kitsch Bond gadgets and space rockets. Knocking civil thermonuclear fusion on the head just doesn’t seem like his cup of tea.

Okay, so something a bit more ‘fun’ then?

Yes, now we’re getting somewhere. Musk is Tony Stark, after all. He’s a bit of a playboy, a show-off, and is cool because the stuff he has given to the world is cool too. So, he should invest in something exciting, but also with a potential benefit to mankind. There’s got to be the potential for a big profit margin, perhaps some history making, and if, like his new Lotus submarine, it dusts off old glories and makes them shine bright again, we’re onto a winner.

Seems like we’re heading towards sport?

Pleasure to millions, plenty of worthy candidates, and the chance to become a legend. Musk should turn his attention to sport and help revive the fortunes of one of the racing world’s best-known, most respected, and very desperate cases.

Elon Musk should get hold of Williams F1.

Williams had many great moments in F1: Damon Hill’s 1995 world title, Nigel Mansell’s domination in 1990, sticking it to Schumacher at Ferrari with Villeneuve in 1997, and nine constructors' titles between 1980 and 1997. Sadly, its halcyon days are over now, opting for unpredictable hire drivers and only one win since 2004. It’s a team badly in need of a revival.

Away from the circuit, Williams Advanced Engineering is one of the jewels in the crown of British engineering. It’s worked on the Jaguar C-X75 supercar, Audi’s Le Mans-winning TDI racers, and next year’s electric Formula E single-seaters. Remember the Porsche 911 GT3R Hybrid? WAI developed its flywheel-based KERS system. And it’s signed on to co-develop future high-performance Nissans with Nismo.

Image Credit: Autoblog

There’s your real world angle, and the cake icing of rejuvenating a once-great racing team. Better racecars, better road cars, and the warm glow of motorsport history. Elon, give Frank Williams a call when you’ve finished playing James Bond – it’s your next best plaything.