Former footballer Eric Cantona said, ‘When you are a rich man, you are proud to own a Rolls Royce, and when you are a poor man, you are proud to own a Renault.’ Luca Netz, CEO of the Web3 NFT community Pudgy Penguins, and a self-made youngster who once ran a drop-shipping business selling fake gold chains, became wealthy and followed suit. However, he didn’t like it at all! Not many millionaires echo that sentiment, but Netz has his own reasons. Let’s first learn a bit about this Rolls-loathing millionaire.
The enterprising teenager, who had a tumultuous and financially unstable childhood, made his first million at 18 after selling his e-commerce faux-gold jewelry business. His next clever, life-changing move was purchasing Pudgy Penguins for $2.5 million. Pudgy Penguins, a collection of 8,888 penguin NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, expanded into tangible, plush toys sold at Walmart, a move that turned the 25-year-old founder into a businessman worth over $100 million.
A rich man deserved a rich-looking car to zip around in, and that’s when the Cullinan rolled in, pun intended. In an interview with Fortune, he shared his thoughts about this extravagant purchase—a Rolls Royce Cullinan worth $375,000: ‘There’s no purchase that I regret more than my Rolls-Royce Cullinan, easily the worst car I’ve ever owned,’ Netz said. ‘It’s a great car on its face. But it’s big and clunky—I call it the oil rig. It has no gadgets and no functionality. Outside of the pretty orange interior I have, it serves no purpose.’ He added, ‘It’s going to stay an oil rig in the front lawn of my home, just in case we strike gold one of these days and I need to start pumping oil. Maybe that thing can do that.’
He may not have been born with a silver spoon, or anything close to one, but in recent years, he did taste the good life, like buying his million-dollar home at 19. Not many know that Netz was without a home of his own growing up. ‘We were homeless for about 10 years. We lived all over the world, from South Africa to Paris to London to New York City to Los Angeles. We did that as long as my mom could muster it. Eventually, she was able to get a job. Being an illegal immigrant from France at the time, it was definitely very difficult. When I was about 12 years old, we finally settled down in mid-city Los Angeles.’
Not only did he make a wonderful life and home for himself, he even bought a car he liked, a 2019 BMW M4, which he calls his favorite, unlike the Cullinan. Many bigwigs from the world of business and entertainment have been Rolls Royce loyalists, from billionairess Kim Kardashian and her sister, makeup mogul Kylie Jenner, to soccer star David Beckham, and high-profile billionaire Stephen Hung, who purchased the largest Phantom fleet in the world after requesting 30 bespoke extended wheelbase Phantoms.
On the other hand, there are tycoons worth billions who own and drive much simpler cars. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, worth $170 billion, has been known to drive a Honda Accord. The eternally frugal Warren Buffett, worth $121 billion, drove a 2006 Cadillac DTS for 10 years before upgrading to a new Cadillac XTS. And Mark Zuckerberg, with a $118 billion fortune zips around in a $30,000 Acura TSX.
