Ten things to buy instead of Neymar Jr for £200 million

Remember that one-off Rolls-Royce Sweptail from a moths or so back? Ten million quid, that cost. It’s supposedly the most expensive new car ever, making the Bugatti Chiron look comparatively cheap as chips at just £2.5 million, give or take some lacquered carbon fibre.

Yet this week, the Roller, and every other car from here to a Ferrari 250 GTO, was made to look quite small fry, after a French football club agreed to pay £200m for a man. FC Barcelona gets the lump sum, and Paris Saint-Germain then pays Neymar Jr £40.7m a year for his services as a footballer. 

Naturally, this has led to much gnashing of teeth about the crazy numbers involved, and how you could buy entire teams of players, and a decent club to employ them at, with the same sum. Clearly, we should instead be mulling over how to put these vast quantities of money into context, by drawing up a TG shopping list. Here’s what you could’ve, erm, scored...

The under-threat 'Ring sold in 2014 for €100m. At current, post Brexit vote exchange rate, that’s about £90m. So for Neymar’s fee, the 'Ring could be yours, with enough change to last you ten lifetimes. Or you could have a 1:1 scale replica built in your mansion’s back garden, probably.

It’s estimated that Audi and Porsche’s respective LMP1 efforts – both now dead in the water – cost about £200m a season. Of course, that includes a full crew, technical support, driver fees and running several cars per team, plus worldwide transport. It’s not just race fuel and tyres, in other words. But there must be a fair few mechanics going spare now the VW group has cold feet over endurance racing, so it’s a buyer’s market. Fancy giving Toyota some competition?

Don’t limit yourself. Want a Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer? They’re about £400,000 and up. An Eagle E-Type is the thick end of £650,000. And the Alfaholics GTA-R will set you back about £240,000. Have one of each, for each of your ten houses, and you’ll still have barely dented your bank balance.

Still the UK’s cheapest car, the Sandero, at just £5,995. So with over 33,000 at your disposal, you could give one to every inhabitant of San Marino.

The world’s most expensive car had to feature here at some point. We would suggest having eighty of the 1,479bhp W16 Chiron is excessive, but quite frankly just having one is a little over the top…

The 250 GTO has become legendary for its huge auction values, with £29m being the top whack yet paid for one of Ferrari’s most beautiful creations at auction. Of the 36 produced, the Neymar fee would score you at least six, possibly seven, if there’s a downturn in the market. And you haggle.

Okay, last example of ‘look how many of these rare supercars you could have all to yourself’, we promise. 17 McLaren F1s is a hefty chunk of the 106-strong production run. Just don’t ask for the GTR that won Le Mans. Or the F1 GT prototype. Or the record-setting XP5. Or any of the F1s imprisoned in Brunei. Or…

Officially, hiring exclusive use of the Yas Marina Bay F1 circuit will set you back a cool £21,500 a day. But when you’ve got Neymar money to blow, this is a piffling drop in the ocean. Presuming you’ve already got a decent collection of cars at your disposal, you could hire the nocturnal venue for 25 straight years, just about. Would you get bored of a track day after doing 9,000 on the bounce?

Ahh, America. Land of the bargain, if not the completely free. Dodge Demon drag radial tyres are about £150 a pop over there, if you shop around on the internet. So score the car and you’ve got over 600,000 sets of rear to vaporise on the back of your wheelie-tastic 840bhp muscle car. Now that wouldn’t get boring…would it?

We’re just saying, after all the other expensive gear on this list, £4.45 for the world’s greatest car magazine isn’t too bad, even if we say so ourselves.