You are constraining yourself with the qualifier that the car be new. For the brands you are talking about, $180k is not at the entry point, and don’t forget that you have to then add on sales tax and licensing... but in all those examples the last thing I would do is buy a new model. For $180k you can buy a lot of pre-owned exotic and ultra-luxury cars and the best advice in this thread, on that point, is to go buy a used Ferrari FF. There are 5k mile cars for sale right now that are CPO and can be had for $175k. A heavily optioned FF sold new for $350k and comes with 7 years of prepaid maintenance and the ability to buy up to 15 years of extended warranty, bumper-to-bumper, right from Ferrari. It’s called the Power15 warranty.

I know, I bought a 2016 California T last week with just 1,340 miles, 1 owner car, CPO, MSRP $272k. I paid $178k for the car, another $20k for tax and licensing.

I looked the AMG GT 4 door. I really like the car but it is quite large and, like all things Mercedes, heavy. I have an E63S wagon right now and think the 5.5 twin turbo is one of the finest engines ever created. I’m not so strong on the 4.0 version of this engine, it just doesn’t sound as good and the power curve feels different than my car. The MCT Speedshift 9 is really impressive, almost at the same level that the PDK is. I say almost at the same level because you have to drive it hard to really feel how good it is, around town I often find my car (7 speed, not 9 but otherwise the same transmission) to not be in the right gear. I never have this problem with the PDK. Dynamic AWD is a game changer.

My wagon is a 2016 and I rarely keep cars for more than a few years. I had an order for a Panamera Turbo S E-hybrid Sport Turismo and when I got my initial confirmation of build, before the lock-in date, I saw delivery in 01/2019 but with a MY2018. This irritated me enough to cancel the order. I’m not taking delivery of a 2018 car in 2019 with the depreciation as bad as it is on these cars. So I bought a Ferrari instead and will revisit the AMG replacement in a few months. I’ll probably still buy a Panamera but I’m not going to screw around with build-to-order when there are dealer inventory Sport Turismos with maxed out options available today.

The Audi R8 V10 is one of the great supercars of our time, Lamborghini engine, it’s a screamer. Too bad it feels so damn sterile. As much as I love this car, I just can’t get passionate about it. I think the new Acura NSX is far more interesting. I do find the RS7 to be one of those “damn I hated it but it really grew on me” cars. It’s interesting to note that if you overlay the silhouette of Model S over the RS7, they are really similar but the obedient automotive press never fawns over the 7 like they do the Model S.