Right now, there's a house in Orange County, California you can buy. It's pretty spartan, with a mere eight bedrooms in the main residence, although if you add in the three guest houses, it has a total of 12. Barely enough to squeeze a family into. That also includes 15 bathrooms and five half-baths, so if you have teenage daughters, not enough. Don't forget the helipad, tennis court, lakes (yes, plural), horse stables, and — this is literally in the listing, I'm not making this up — a refrigerator.
Oh yeah, and the car museum. It has a car museum too.
This modest abode has 24,000 square feet dedicated to displaying a variety of classic cars. The current owners put a particular emphasis on American models from the 1930s. We spot Ford Model As, Ford Model 40s (which powered Bonnie and Clyde past hapless cops trying to catch them), Cadillac V16s, a Packard 12, a Ford Model T, and a couple of Duesenberg Model Js for good measure. Looks like he also picked up some Ferraris, Porsches, and Rolls-Royces along the way, no biggie. In all, you could put around 70 of your own cars in there. You know, if you could tolerate living in such squalor.
The house was built in 1986 by William Lyon, a real estate tycoon (could you tell?) and also a major general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. According to the Wall Street Journal, Lyon saw actress Norma Shearer in a red Cadillac as a young boy, and he forever afterwards thought American cars of the 1930s were just the pinnacle of cool. So, what to do once he got rich selling houses? Make his own house, complete with a giant collection of 1930s American cars. Nice.
His favorite was apparently a 1929 Duesenberg Model J, which is wife got him for his 60th birthday. Looking through the pictures available in the listing, it does look like the Model Js get pride of place in a number of spots around the house. One even has a stuffed lion on the same dais, underneath a collection of animal heads. Ah, wealth.
If you'd like this house with a car museum in it — and don't worry, it comes with its own gas station, workshop, and carwash, in case you thought they were cheaping out on you — it can be yours for the low, low asking price of $125 million. If you do pick the place up for that money, you'll be more than doubling Orange County's previous record of $61 million. The cost of the 70 cars you'd have to put into the museum space is up to you.
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