exotic car rental club. plusses vs. minuses?

[}{arlequin]

http://www.theottoclub.com/


any of you guys have had any experience w/ such things? i know there is one, maybe more, of these things in the uk. prolly others on the continent. any brits that have heard stories, horror or otherwise, are welcome to comment.

[Jeff Higgins]

There was a guy around here hitting up folks at the local car shows, club gatherings, track days, and anywhere else one would likely find car enthusiasts. He was selling shares in "myothercar.com" or something like that. The idea was that a big enough pool of owners could have a fleet of exotics they could not only drive for themselves, but eventually grow into a business that could rent to the public. He was promoting the idea, at the track day I met him at anyway, that the cars would be available for rent or for shareholders' use at track days. Yup, there you go - throw a CGT, GT2, GT3, or whatever into the pool and encourage the renting of it for track days. I'm not sure whatever became of it; the group he had gathered just all walked away shaking their heads.

[VaSteve]

There was an article in one of the car mags (pick one ) a couple of months back that talked about this. It was a membership fee to enter and you could take different cars all the time 360 Modena one week, 1980's 6 series with 75K miles the next. Sounded pretty cool. Not everything was exotic.

[}{arlequin]

steve, i get the concept i'm just curious if anyone has encountered (or heard of) any 'real life' obstacles or some dissatisfied customers

[Dantilla]

I would not consider this unless all of the cars are paid for with cash up front.

Recently, I was asked to invest in a flying club that would purchase a small fleet of new Cessnas. The problem was that everybody was going to be personally held liable for all five loans. While it may have worked out okay, I didn't want the risk if some people bailed out and left a few with either huge payments or wrecked credit ratings.

[}{arlequin]

good point. that's the kind of info i'm looking for. thanks

[MysticLlama]

Agree...

I was looking into doing something like this, worked out some basic financials, maintenance costs, storage costs, vehicle aquisition costs, etc.

To do it right, it'd take about $1m up front, and then you'd have some cars with which to entice memberships. You can't go in with a single old Boxster and I think an Elise (like the other local guy) and really high weekend rates and expect to build it to something, you need to have something interesting there first.

Do some searching around, there is a place in Chicago if I remember right, and maybe one in NY. The better ones work more like timeshares than rental places.

I've heard there are quite a few in Europe also, and that people are pretty happy with them for the most part, each is different of course.

You don't want to have part ownership in an F360 that only gets maintenance when something breaks for instance.

[Tervuren]

As I live my little 944, I've never looked into the details, but I know a guy who runs one of these with a DB9, F430, and 575MM if I remember aright.