drondinone

My name is David, and I am new to this forum. I am not an owner of a porsche, although I think they are amazing cars. I have owned sports cars all my life (starting with a beater Datsun 280Z, currently a Corvette ZR1, and lots in between), but have always wanted to have access to a variety of sports cars without having to personally own them all. So, I am looking to start a local sports car sharing/subscription club in the San Francisco Bay Area (I am in Berkeley). I would like to find at least 3 other like minded car nuts to join me. I have developed a few different business models, and think this would be a fun way to share some awesome cars with others who share my passion.

If you have any interest please post here or email me directly. I would be happy to answer questions and share my ideas/models. I imagine there must be plenty of people in my area who would love access to a small fleet of sports cars at a reasonable investment/cost.

bigyeezy

Club Sportiva has been doing this and has some interesting inventory fleet. Not sure how successful it has been. Any thoughts on this club and what you'd like to do differently given they have scale already and a lot of people in the buy in pool there?

mister993

There's also Fast Toys Club...

drondinone

I have researched Club Sportiva extensively, and spoken with them multiple times. I even considered putting my C6 Corvette ZR1 in their stable. However, it is very expensive to participate in their club. For example, to rent a Porsche Boxster S for a three day weekend would cost over $1000, and I don't recall if that includes insurance. I believe that they have a fairly high overhead and multiple employees to pay for. I don't know anything about the fast toys club but will look it up.

What I have in mind is something that is on a smaller scale, and involves the members participating directly in the company they invest in. For example, if six people each invested 50k they could each drive a car from a small fleet of vehicles and have one every day, not just one weekend a month, with a monthly due significantly less than the cost of renting the Boxster from club sportiva for a long weekend.

drondinone

Fast Toys appears to have a slightly lower cost (compared to Club Sportiva) by requiring annual memberships, but to access the cars for more than a few days each month you essentially have to come up with $2500/month, giving you about four to eight days and just under 300 miles per month. By comparison, if you can get four people to invest $50k each, they could pay about $750 per month to drive each of these same cars for a full week each month. The difference is that the investors participate in the running of the club and the overhead is kept low. If you can get eight people together, you can pool the investments to provide a larger assortment of sports cars that the members can access all the time, still keeping the monthly dues around $750. The key is to buy the cars lightly used, and the keep the overhead low. And with this type of setup, the Club can maintain its value and thus the initial investment of $50k is not lost like in the other options.

RRSLLC

We are a Corporate member of Sportiva (we are both at Club Autosport) and have a 981 Boxster S in their fleet. I agree that one-off rental can be pricy, but if you contribute a car and/or buy points in bulk (we do both) it becomes more economical.

If there is broad interest at this forum, we'd be happy to host an event there for all to learn more.

drondinone

I am curious what more economical refers to - my understanding was that in bulk ($20k) you could get a discount of some sort - do you know what that is? I have seen 50% thrown around but what was your experience? Also, it was my understanding that when you place your car with them, when they rent it out you earn 1/2 of the rental as a credit towards renting other vehicles with them. This to me means that in exchange for providing the service of handling customers, they keep 1/2 of the rental amount and only provide credit (and not cash) for the other half. This implies that the overhead+profit for that business is at least 50% of the income (actually 100% of what is "paid" to the owner of the car). I think that if a small group of people start a club with their own money and run it themselves, that overhead could be reduced significantly and allow members/owners much greater access to the cars for much less money. What I am looking for a much more personal type of sharing which does not require the overhead of a fancy facility and full time staff.

RRSLLC

They have a sliding scale discount, but not sure if that is confidential so let me check before posting.

On the lease sharing program, I crunched the numbers hard before doing it. It works well for me since they handle all the marketing, let me use my own car anytime I want, keeps it clean (maintainence is on me) and ship any car down to Socal where I go once a month. Your needs may be different.

drondinone

I have forgotten about the second location bonus. That may be worth it for some (and it sounds like you are able to take advantage of that). I guess what I have in mind is more local, and thus would save the cost of such a feature. It sounds like a good fit for what you use.