IMAGINE you're a squillionaire with a more than passing interest in cars, writes William Scholes.
You're on first name terms with the bosses at companies like Ferrari, Bugatti, McLaren and Aston Martin and in each of your garages around the world - their walls lined with Swarovski crystals, naturally, and with hot and cold running alcohol hand gel on tap - you already have more Italian, German and British exotica than you can shake a wrist dressed by Vacheron Constantin or Audemars Piguet at.
How, then, do those companies persuade you to buy yet more new stuff when you already have everything?
The answer, at least in part, is with cars like the three on this page.
Each in their own way represents the pinnacle of craftsmanship and engineering, yet each is also fantastically pointless and irrelevant.
And if you think they also prove that deep pockets are no guarantee of good taste, you ain't seen nothing yet - I suggest that you summon all your courage and Google 'Mansory Rolls-Royce Cullinan' for a sight too horrible for a family newspaper...
ASTON MARTIN V12 SPEEDSTER
I love Aston Martin as much as the next man, but this seems a step too far.
The question to be asked of all Aston Martin cars is whether you can imagine James Bond driving one.
And of course he wouldn't be seen dead in something like the Speedster, which looks like it belongs on the Spectre company car list.
The Speedster's spec sheet is noteworthy as much for what it does without as for what it comes with - there might be a wonderful V12 engine somewhere under that bodywork but there's no windscreen and no roof.
The price tag starts at £765,000, from where it will accelerate towards the stratosphere almost as quickly as the car itself.
Aston claims a top speed of 186mph (that's a nice round 300kmh in metric-land) and a 0-62mph time of 3.5 seconds, which should be bracing.
On the plus side, they are only making 88 of them.
PININFARINA BATTISTA ANNIVERSARIO
Got a spare €2.6 million burning a hole in your pocket? Step this way, towards the Pininfarina Battista Anniversario, the "most powerful road-legal Italian car ever made".
This thing is unhinged - 1,873bhp and 1,696lb.ft from four electric motors means it gets to 62mph quicker than a Formula 1 car and hits 186mph in less than 12 seconds. Just think about that for a minute... and then drink in the fact that for all that ludicrous power and performance, the Battista is only Italy's most powerful road car, which means that even more bonkers coming the way of the world's billionaires.
Top speed is limited to 217mph. Pininfarina says it will build a total of 150 of its all-electric hypercar, five of which will be this Anniversario version.
The car's motors draw their power from a 120kWh battery pack. No word on charging times though...
BENTLEY BACALAR
Even if you wanted one of these open-top GTs, you can't have one. Bentley is only building 12, and they are already all spoken for.
It is essentially a reskinned Continental, meaning it has had an excellent start in life. The Conti is a fabulous car, and the Bacalar gets its full-fat 6.0-litre W12 engine, with its 650bhp of woofly loveliness.
Bentley wants it to be a calling card for its newly-established Mulliner 'bespoke coachbuilding' operation.
But wouldn't something more elegant and, well, beautiful than the Bacalar been a better way to launch the initiative?
And just to show that hyper-expensive cars can be environmentally friendly, Bentley says the Bacalar's ethically-sourced materials include "rice husk ash paint and 5,000-year-old Riverwood".
Just in case you don't know what Riverwood is, it's described as a "sustainable wood from naturally fallen trees that has been preserved for 5,000 years in peat bogs, lakes and rivers found in the Fenlands of East Anglia". Isn't it a rather moot point whether a tree was 'naturally felled' 5,000-years-ago?
For good measure, the car will be handcrafted in the "world's first certified carbon neutral factory for luxury car production".
