The cars of Brooklyn Beckham… rated

Unless you’ve spent the last week trapped in a blizzard at a polar research station (unlikely) or are totally immune to juicy celeb gossip (even less likely), you’ll be aware that Brooklyn Peltz Beckham – son of David and Victoria Beckham, sometime photographer, sometime chef, sometime sake entrepreneur and we’re not even making that up – has gone nuclear.

In an Instagram post described as both ‘excoriating’ and also ‘really long’, Brooklyn accused his in-laws of a variety of transgressions, the most egregious being, it would seem, “embarrassing wedding dancing”.

Top Gear can offer no insight on the backstory to this celebrity family feud, or the extents of Brooklyn’s business acumen, save to agree that elephants are indeed so hard to photograph but incredible to see.

But we do know a little about car collections, so we figured we’d add our helpful input to the Beckham discourse by running the rule over the vehicles Brooklyn owns – or at least has been spotted driving, which, when it comes to the internet, is basically the same thing. Let’s nepo-go!

At the age of 18 and having recently passed his driving test, Brooklyn was spotted cruising around LA in an F80 BMW M3.

Yes, as many tabloids pointed out at the time, a 400bhp, rear-drive super-saloon is not the sort of car chosen by your average 18-year-old rookie driver. But – at the risk of pointing out the obvious – Brooklyn Beckham is not your average 18-year-old. He’s the son of one of England’s most famous footballers and one of the Spice Girls’ most famous Spice Girls.

The fact he chose to get around LA in an M3 rather than, say, a Tramontana XTR or on the back of a full-grown Masai giraffe demonstrates, in our opinion, a commendable degree of restraint.

When it comes to wedding presents from your parents, a half-a-million quid electrified classic no question sits at the ‘even a bit much for Marie Antoinette’ end of the scale.

But don’t forget Brooklyn’s dad David – a low-profile entrepreneur and former sportsperson from England – has been an investor in Silverstone-based EV restomod firm Lunaz since 2021. He’ll have got mates’ rates on that!

“This remarkable car is the perfect gift to his son Brooklyn and daughter-in-law, Nicola on their wedding day,” gushed Lunaz founder David Lorenz at the time. “In every respect, this extraordinary electric classic car symbolises a bright, positive future.”

Not that bright a future, it would appear.

While summering in London, Brooklyn has frequently been spotted at leisure in a Merc C-Class coupe, described by the Sun newspaper as ‘eye-catching’ and ‘a flash motor’.

And yes, Top Gear would concede that, compared to the average car driven by the average human in their early 20s, a £37k Merc is indeed quite flash. However, by the standards of Brand Beckham, it’s veritably invisible.

Wouldn’t it have been more ostentatious for Brooklyn to roll around Notting Hill in, say, a battered 2011 VW Up with steel wheels and 120,000 miles on the clock? Conspicuous humility is still conspicuous.

In 2019, BMW collaborated with a young Brooklyn on a photographic project to capture ‘new, unconventional angles on current BMW models’. Whether these angles were conventional by artistic design or because it takes a while to learn how to hold a camera straight, Top Gear cannot say.

In any case, Brooklyn described the Z4 as “cool and dangerous” and “the most mind-blowing car I’ve ever seen".

BMW, for its part, asserted that, “Brooklyn Beckham is as difficult to pigeonhole as the new BMW Z4”. By which presumably they meant ‘really quite easy to pigeonhole’, what with one being an entirely traditional sports car and the other being an entirely traditional child of celebrity parents.

Top Gear is no art critic, but cannot help noticing that much of the resulting portfolio comprised photographs of Brooklyn Beckham taking photographs of the Z4, rather than photographs taken by Brooklyn Beckham of a Z4. But hey, cars are tricky things to shoot. Not as tricky as elephants, mind.

In 2017, new driver Brooklyn was papped wrangling a Jeep Wrangler Sahara round Hollywood.

“The AS level student,” reported the Daily Mail breathlessly, “donning a backwards white cap and sleeveless top, was so casual that he drove one-handed… despite only passing his test just last month.”

Driving one-handed! The arrogance! Is it possible Brooklyn was using that other hand to – for example – change gear? Or adjust the demist settings to ensure a clear view of the road ahead? It is! Does it matter? It does not!

Now this is more nepo-like it. The P1 is exactly the sort of deranged machine our 23-year-old privilege-children should be driving: a 900bhp, million-pound hyper-hybrid with a well-earned reputation for spitting careless drivers into the weeds.

Rich kid flounces around in ultra-rare supercar. Influencer shoots rich kid flouncing around in ultra-rare supercar. Social media piles onto rich kid for his car choice. These traditions form the very bedrock of our society, and you question them at your peril.