Elon Musk Spent $1M On A Car, But His Wife Wasn’t Impressed. She Feared They’d Become ‘Spoiled Brats’—He Later Crashed It Trying To Show Off

Elon Musk‘s love affair with risk has always been bigger than his love of cars. Back in 1999, the two collided.

Fresh off the sale of his first startup, Zip2, Musk pocketed an estimated $20 million from the deal with Compaq. He didn’t rush toward a mansion or vacation home. Instead, he settled into an 1,800-square-foot condo in Palo Alto, California, and dropped $1 million on a McLaren F1 sports car.

The moment drew attention. CNN captured the delivery of the silver F1 in front of his home. Standing beside Musk was his then-girlfriend, Justine Wilson, soon to be his first wife. She looked uneasy. “It’s a million dollars for a car. It’s decadent,” she told CNN in 1999. “My fear is that we become spoiled brats, that we lose a sense of appreciation and perspective.”

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According to a 2012 Business Insider article recounting Musk’s interview with Sarah Lacy at PandoDaily, he admitted that in 2000, while driving on Sand Hill Road with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, he decided to show off. “Watch this,” he said, moments before the McLaren spun out of control, flew “like a discus” three feet into the air, and crashed. The worst part, Musk acknowledged, was that the million-dollar car wasn’t insured.

That bit of daredevilry didn’t end his relationship with Justine—for now. Musk and Justine married in 2000, and their lives entered a fast lane. By 2002, Musk had founded SpaceX. By 2004, he was on Tesla’s board. In rapid succession, they were juggling ambition and family. Justine gave birth to twins and then triplets between 2002 and 2006, all while working on her writing. She published three novels under pressure and under time.

Still, his empire’s growth exposed strain. In 2008, Musk filed for divorce just before becoming Tesla’s CEO. His public star rose quickly. Four years later he appeared on Forbes’ list of billionaires with a $2 billion fortune.

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Justine never matched that scale. Today Forbes estimates her net worth around $15 million. During the divorce, she sought the family home, child support, $6 million in cash, 10% of Tesla, 5% of SpaceX, and a glacier-blue Tesla Roadster. Had she got the full package, Forbes reckons she’d now be worth more than $17 billion, which would place her among the world’s richest.

Instead, what she received was much less. The backbone of the split was a post-nuptial agreement she signed in 2000. In a 2010 essay in Marie Claire, she reflected on her blind trust: “I trusted my husband—why else had I married him?—and I told myself it didn’t matter. We were soul mates. We would never get divorced.” Only later did she grasp that she had waived key marital rights, including claims to community property.

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She tried to challenge the agreement, arguing Musk failed to disclose a major pending deal: the merger of his payments startup X.com with Confinity. That merger later became PayPal, which eBay bought for $1.5 billion. Musk reportedly netted at least $100 million. The court battle dragged on for two years, cost millions, and ultimately ended in Musk’s favor.

In hindsight, the McLaren F1 crash resonates deeper than a flashy headline. It sums up Musk’s early playbook: spend big, take risks, court spectacle, and shrug at safety nets. Justine’s fear of “spoiled brats” wasn’t a moralizing quip—it was a premonition. Musk’s gamble on a million-dollar supercar, uninsured and daring, foreshadowed a life built on high stakes. Unlike that McLaren, most of his later gambles didn’t crash. Many redefined entire industries.

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