The ultimate footballer's car

03/02/12

We all know that footballers love to splash their cash – whether it be on their WAGs, their homes, or their motors. Footballers tend to have a taste for the OTT, so it’s no wonder that we often see them leaving clubs or driving home from training on lavish, expensive cars, with blacked out windows and souped up modifications.

Whilst you might not get paid £100,000 a week, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t enjoy some of the footballer perks. It’s no secret that cars depreciate in value significantly once they leave the forecourt, so buying a footballer favourite second hand or used might allow you to get your hands on the car of choice for your favourite player.

Despite very few of them actually living in the countryside, 4x4s and huge off road vehicles are big footballer favourites. Perhaps it’s the blacked out windows and humongous tyres that they like to use to scare off the paparazzi, or maybe there’s just a lot of potholes in Essex. Either way, if you want a cheap way to emulate your favourite centre-forward, why not investigate a second hand Range Rover? Sure, it might not be as impressive as David Beckham’s armour-plated number but we doubt that’s within anyone’s budger, unless they’re a red carpet regular.

Mercedes, rather unsurprisingly, is another car brand that football players adore. Steven Gerrad, Frank Lampard, Jermaine Defoe and David Beckham own one. It was rumoured that Wayne Rooney also had his eye on the rare Mercedes McLaren SLR convertible, but struggled to get hold of one. Second hand cars of the Mercedes variety aren’t cheap either, if you want a model to rival the likes of that fantasy line up.

The Porsche 911 Turbo was also a trend for footballers when it’s latest incarnation, the 997 was released in early 2011. It can reach 0–60 mph time in 3.2 seconds and comes with a price tag of over £50,000. Like the Mercedes, Porsches are likely to set you back a fair bit but with an average lifespan of just over 4 years and the fact that it’ll make you feel like you play for England, we’re sure it’s worth every penny.

And it’s not just flash, modern cars that football stars are partial to - classic cars like the Bentley also catch their eye. Rio Ferdinand owns the £190,000 Bentley Arnage, and Beckham has two of the manufacturers models in his (what we assume is very spacious) garage. Buying a used car like a Bentley isn’t in any reasonable price bracket, unless to you reasonable falls above the price of a flat. So you might have  to just stick with a blonde girlfriend and a kick about in the local park for now.