The AirBnB of Classic Cars Is Finally Here
The current world of peer-to-peer apps allowing us to send money and snippets of our lives to each other with a few strokes of the thumb is the same technological surge that brought us the convenience of things like AirBnB and Turo, the car-sharing service that allows individuals to rent their rides to each other while the company skims a bit of the price to provide the parties with insurance.
While it’s good fun to borrow someone’s new 911 for the day without much hassle, it would be even better if it were an old 911, right? Well, there’s good news for you if you agree because it looks like the keys to some of our vintage dreams are now in reach. Recently launched by Hagerty, their new DriveShare program takes the idea of user-sourced supply and demand and applies it to the classic car sphere. This means if you’re an owner you can set a price and stipulations for people to rent your vehicle, and if you’re looking to spend a day or two with something special you simply enter your location and peruse the cars offered.
The service is in its early days at the moment (Hagerty acquired a similar service, Classics&Exotics, not long ago, and is now more or less rebranding it and putting the weight of their name behind the project to instill confidence in those wary of smaller companies), so don’t be shocked to find a limited selection at the moment. A quick search in Los Angeles already reveals some nice variety though, as among the handful of expected 2002s there is a Knight Rider replica, a DeLorean, a Pontiac GTO, and an MGA all ready to be rented. There are so-called “exotics” as well, but the search function has some nice functionality to remove the incipient hordes of Gallardos and F430s that would clog up the results otherwise.
It’s an interesting concept, and it presents otherwise unavailable opportunities for easier classic driving experiences, to both sides of the deal. The owners can offset some of the costs they face (depending on how gentle the renters are obviously) by loaning their cars when not in use, and the renters now have a streamlined simple solution to their vintage yearning.
The costs are clearly going to be higher than what you’d encounter at the Hertz counter, but this shouldn’t be a surprise. To that end, Hagerty is providing insurance up to $1 million, comprehensive roadside assistance, and it has a screening process for each member before any keys change hands. For more details, check out the DriveShare site, but in the meantime, what are some cars that you think would fit into this platform? I don’t think we’ll be seeing anything requiring the upper limit of the insurance, but there are already some intriguing choices popping up.
