“I am Iron Man.” Four words, delivered at the end of a press conference in 2008 by a character who had just torn up his script, and with them a cinematic universe was born. Eleven years and twenty-odd films later, as Avengers: Endgame arrives to the sort of anticipation usually reserved for royal weddings and the Ashes, it is worth pausing to ask a rather more interesting question than “Will he save the universe?” The question is: where does the man who made Tony Stark believable actually live, what does he drive, and what is strapped to his wrist while he does it? Because it turns out that the real Robert Downey Jr. has been quietly assembling a life every bit as improbable as the one on screen, only with fewer explosions and, one hopes, a much better insurance policy. There is a concrete dome in Malibu that looks as though it landed from a science-fiction paperback, a nineteenth-century windmill in the Hamptons that appears to have wandered out of a fairy tale and been given a very good interior designer, a garage of muscle cars modified with the sort of loving disrespect that makes purists weep, and a watch box containing a tourbillon with a rotating globe on the dial. It is not so much a lifestyle as a cheerful, wildly expensive act of rebellion against the beige. Let us, then, take the tour.
The Houses: A Dome, a Windmill and Some Alpacas
Start where the sun sets, in Malibu. The property was bought in 2009 and renovated in 2013, and it sits on seven acres with a main house and a guesthouse. Beside them stands a concrete “clubhouse” built on the 1960s Binishell principle, in which a giant neoprene bladder is inflated and topped with steel-reinforced concrete. It resembles an igloo designed by someone who has read too much science fiction, and I mean that as the highest praise. A Vanity Fair profile from 2014 described a giant R on the lawn and a pen with goats and alpacas that he could not quite explain. One suspects that is the whole charm.
Then cross the country to the Hamptons, where the family home is a 19th-century windmill. Originally built as a playhouse and extended into a full home, it was bought in 2016 for a reported $10.5 million, and Architectural Digest was given the tour. The result is a house that has clearly never met a beige wall it liked, which brings us neatly to the subject of what he parks outside it.
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The Cars: Muscle With a Modern Heart
The one everybody talks about is the 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302. SpeedKore built it with the actor’s guidance and debuted it at the 2017 SEMA show. The exterior stays faithful to the original, with a set of HRE wheels the most obvious change, while the underpinnings are thoroughly modern. This is the correct way to modify a classic: the outside says 1970, the inside says “please don’t crash me.” Reports also credit him with a 1974 BMW 3.0 CS given a new engine, drivetrain, suspension and interior, and a modified Nissan GT-R. Back in 2014 he mentioned a Porsche, a Corvette and an F150, so the taste has always run wide.
Tony Stark, of course, drives the Audi R8 on screen. Treat the celebrity garage lists with the cautious optimism they deserve, since they tend to be assembled from paparazzi shots and enthusiasm. Even so, the pattern is clear: take something with history, and improve it without erasing its character. It is a philosophy that extends, rather handsomely, to his wrist.
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The Watches: Where the Real Money Lives
If the cars show his taste for tinkering, the watch box shows his taste for rare things. The clearest tour remains a 2016 GQ video, and the pieces shown there include the Jaeger-LeCoultre from Iron Man 2, a Rolex Submariner “Green Money,” a Bamford GMT-Master II “Ghost,” a Patek Philippe Nautilus, a Bell & Ross tied to Tropic Thunder and a Baume & Mercier inherited from his grandfather. The Jaeger-LeCoultre is a tourbillon GMT that he singled out as arguably his best watch, which makes sense, since it is the one Stark wore on screen. The Rolex trio is a lovely mix: a green-dialled Submariner “Hulk,” a Milgauss with its orange lightning-bolt seconds hand, and a GMT-Master II customised by Bamford with a full black DLC coating. The Nautilus, meanwhile, was a birthday present from his wife, and he called it easily the most glamorous watch a man can have.
Then comes the showstopper. The Greubel Forsey GMT Tourbillon in red gold retailed at roughly $605,000, and he wore it to the Avengers: Infinity War premiere in April 2018. It features a 24-second inclined tourbillon and a rotating three-dimensional titanium globe, and it was limited to 22 pieces. A globe on a watch, worn by a man who has spent a decade saving the world: that is what we would call thematic consistency. Endgame may well close a chapter. But if the dome, the windmill, the Mustang and the globe on his wrist are anything to go by, the man at the centre of it has plenty left in reserve.
