Many Americans dream of driving fabulous, unique, vintage cars. The vast majority of Americans never get to actually do it.
Sure, we see them around—I live in Brooklyn and I don’t own a car, but as I walk around my neighborhood, I spy things: a Carman Ghia in robin’s-egg blue, a boxy Land Rover from the 1980s. And I wonder what it would be like, if only for a day, to tool around in a classic.
Well, it’s a whole lot easier to do that for real now, thanks to DriveShare.com, a classic- and exotic-car rental company that used to be known as Classics & Exotics. In June, Hagerty, the insurance company for collector cars and boats, bought Classics & Exotics (for an undisclosed sum), and officially relaunched it this week as DriveShare. Classics & Exotics co-founder Peter Zawadzki was retained as director of DriveShare.
The premise is very Airbnb-esque: You’re renting cars—a ’73 Mustang, a ’59 Edsel—not from DriveShare but from private owners all around the country. (Turo and Getaround provide similar services, minus the focus on classics.) Prices range from $99 a day for a ‘97 Porsche Boxster in Roanoke, Va., to $3,300 a day for a 2015 Lamborghini Aventador in Venice, California. Insurance and roadside assistance are provided through Hagerty, but you can expect some service fees and security deposits.
There currently appear to be 139 cars in all, but Hagerty is hoping to increase that quickly by marketing to its existing North American client base of roughly 1 million people.
When you browse the site, it’s hard not to start planning trips. That 1979 Triumph Spitfire—white with a black racing stripe and just $350 a day—might be ideal for a two-day cruise up the Pacific Coast Highway.
Any barbecue tour through North Carolina would surely be improved by this 1966 Cadillac DeVille ($215 a day).
Miami, surprisingly, doesn’t have much inventory, but I suppose you could settle for this $1,199-a-day 2014 Rolls Royce Ghost.
Then there are those cars that are so neat and rare they might justify a journey somewhere small and random. Such as this 1931 Ford Model A—aka the Bonnie & Clyde car—in Plano, Texas? Or this 1960 Jaguar MK IX in Cincinnati? This hot-rodded 1927 Model T in South Jordan, Utah? A 1966 Volvo in Plymouth, Mass.?
And there is, of course, a DeLorean—which happens to be DriveShare director Peter Zawadzki’s favorite car in the system. “First I fell in love with the car because of Back to the Future,” he wrote in an email. “And as an adult I grew to love the car for what it is and its unique history in the auto world.”