Roger Vohra is waiting patiently outside his beach-side hotel when a lipstick-red Mercedes pulls up beside him. A man gets out, hands him the keys and tells him, "Enjoy."
In fact, the Mercedes isn't his. It is a rental - a $600-a-day rental, from an outfit so particular about clients it isn't even in the phone book. Vohra heard about it through a friend who knew a well-connected travel agent. "It impresses my clients," explains the investment banker from Montreal.Vohra has stumbled upon a little-known network of companies that cater to people for whom a white Ford just isn't enough. From Florida to California, these companies rent out the hottest, most expensive and hardest-to-find cars on the planet. We're talking Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis and Ferrari Spiders. We're also not talking cheap, with daily rates as high as $1,700 a day, insurance fees not included.
Demand for these companies is booming, because the major players like Hertz and Avis won't deal in this business. In fact, seasoned travelers say the biggest problem is finding these outfits. Nationwide, probably only a dozen or two exist, and many are so tiny they don't advertise. Instead, the companies rely on referrals from hotel concierges and elite travel agents. A few modeling agencies and brokerage firms know about them, too.
"Bottom line, it's word of mouth," says Jeff Riefenberg, who manages Luxuryline Rent A Car in Los Angeles. "We have to know something about you or have heard about you."
Once inside, though, this is a world far removed from the dreary long lines and hard-sell tactics that have long defined the American car-rental experience. At Excellence Luxury Car Rental in Miami, clients are whisked away from the hustle and bustle of the airport by a long black limousine to a private garage five miles away. There, two women in tight, black dresses serve cappuccino and champagne, while a staffer discreetly fills out rental forms. Clients lounge comfortably on leather couches in front of a giant-screen TV.
In an adjoining showroom, new Porsches, Range Rovers, Lexuses and BMWs bask under individual spotlights. The bright-red 1997 Viper stands out, but it is the Bentley that, at $1,700 a day, is the prize. Another popular model, especially for bachelor parties, is the Hummer, the four-wheel-drive hardtop that has been a status symbol since the gulf war. It costs $350 a day to rent, but according to Raymond Mitri, the 30-year-old owner of the company, nobody has ever questioned his prices.
"That's never been an issue for these people," he says. "Price is never discussed."
Companies like this exist, of course, because traditional rental firms have long stayed away from exotic automobiles, opting instead for high-end American models like Lincoln Town Cars or Cadillac Sedan de Villes. They say foreign cars are too expensive to buy to still turn a profit. And there is another problem: These fancy toys are pure bait for car thieves.
"We don't rent foreign cars like that because we prefer not to have them stolen," says Brian Kennedy, an executive vice president for marketing and sales at Hertz. Indeed, one player that dared to venture into the foreign-car market, Budget Rent-A-Car, paid the price. About 50 cars have been stolen from its "Beverly Hills Collection" in Los Angeles, which offers a BMW 328i for $97 a day, as well as a Porsche for $541 a day.
But the smaller outfits say they guard against this problem by requiring their customers to buy special theft insurance, covering the cost of the car in case of theft. In New York, Vogel's Eurocars screens its customers carefully, checking driving records as well as their credit card status. "This is the riskiest business in the world," says owner Dieter Vogel who targets a high-income group of business travelers.
Mitri, at Excellence, says that the minute a customer drives out of his garage, he races to his computer and activates a $5,000 software program that allows him to track the exact location of cars he rents anywhere in the United States.