What would you like to see a hire company hiring out?

If it was worth doing, someone would have done it.

We all like the idea of being able to drive some of the stuff we couldn't insure when we were young, but I can't see many people wating to hire it.

Heh, you really are a glass half full type aren't you Steve ;-)

That seems to get said, by someone, somewhere (and I'm not just talking the confines of this newsgroup) in response to a suggestion of absolutely anything that hasn't been done before. Which basically makes the assumption that absolutely every decent and worthwhile idea that was ever even remotely possible to have been conceived by a human brain has already been done. I can't begin to explain what a huge load of bollocks that is.

Erm, it wasn't specifically "stuff we couldn't insure when we were young" - I mentioned more interesting more modern cars as well i.e. the marginally less mundane alternatives to Mondeos that you're looking at, for example - just didn't list any, 'cos other people might be better placed to....

It's a fair point, though.

A vast majority of hire cars are hired for business use, with the rest hired by people who need something bigger / more suitable to take on holiday.

Can you really see a fleet manager asking for a MkII Golf or Sierra XR4i as a business hire? - and are any of them going to be useful for families who need a large estate or MPV to take on holiday?

The fact is that only a small number of anoraks, such as us lot who subscribe to mods. would be interested in hiring 80s tat. It's not a large market and the total cost of ownership to use 80s tat as hire cars would significantly outweigh the costs of renting out modern stuff. (A lot of rental companies don't keep their cars long enough to need a service these days)

See my other post about the large majority of hires.

If I need to hire something, so long as it's not a supermini or MPV, I'm generally happy.

I certainly wouldn't be all that concerned about getting something 'interesting' over the default Mondeo TDCI just to cover me whilst my car is being repaired or serviced.

For an example of the comparable costs, look at some of the hire car sites and price up a mid-spec. hatch with the CC equivalent. The rental cost is somewhere between 2 and 3 times the hatch price.

Economy of scale means that you're unlikely to be able to offer a competitive quote on, say, a Mondeo ST vs a Mondeo TDCI Zetec.

It's pretty much the same in the lease market, too.

Well clearly not for business hire, or for a family needing something bigger for holidays - most families have got a car already anyway, as with kids wanting ferrying about to various locations, all at virtually the same time, a car is often pretty much essential. I'm on about (and I thought this was pretty clear in the OP) the market of younger people (either single or without kids) who like to live in a vibrant, central location, where for the most part, getting about is actually easier by some other means than by car. I reckon people moving to locations like this can only increase as fuel prices rise, so people ditching the car that they only end up using sporadically anyway, and hiring when they need to, could well grow in popularity as a way to do things.

If you read the OP properly you'd see that it wasn't exclusively about 80s tat. The main theme was stuff that's a bit different from the blandmobiles more hire companies will have. I might not have helped matters my listing a load of 80s tat, but that was only 'cos 80s tat came to mind more easily than more interesting cars of the last 10 years or so.

Maybe, maybe not - by buying something new and selling it at 6-8 months old with 25-30k on the clock, you virtually guarantee not have to spend anything maintaining it, but even with getting the cars at a good discount, you'd still lose a fair bit in depreciation. I'm not saying it's not the most sensible route for a large (or even small) hire company to go, but a carefully selected, carefully managed fleet of older cars need not be silly amounts more expensive, particularly if you've got a properly qualified mechanic on hand to do the majority of service/repair work.

That's true enough, from what I've heard - loads of ex-hire cars going on the market at 6-8 months old with 25-30k on the clock. But surely they must still have to regularly inspect them - I mean, brake pads on a hire car could easily get worn out before it says it's due a service, and if a brake pad wear sensor fails, a hire company could be in serious shit.

But that's not what I was on about. Of course someone with a company shed isn't going to be all that bothered about getting something a bit cool and retro (a nice Mk2 Golf GTi for example) if it's just a tool to do his job while his regular car's getting serviced.

Think about what started this - it was Dan talking about Nom with his 406 V6 Coupe, and the fact that it rarely gets used these days due to city centre living and the fact that walking/cycling is by far the best option for most of his + his other half's journeys. But he still keeps the 406 'cos presumably it looks nice, goes fairly well, and 'cos he quite simply likes it. He could probably go down to his local Enterprise (or whatever local car hire mob exists round his way) and hire a Mondeo TDCI / Zafira 1.6 or whatever, each time he wanted to go anywhere in the car, and overall his costs would probably be pretty similar to running the 406, but presumably because the times he's driving it's in leisure time, and not just for a boring work-related journey, he enjoys having something a bit nicer. Maybe if there was somewhere hiring out a variety of stuff from "old 80s tat" to more interesting slightly more modern cars (such as V6 406 Coupes) then it might be enough to tempt him, and millions of others in a similar position, into stopping running their own cars and hiring when they needed one.

Yup, but that's 'cos you're comparing like for like. All big lease and hire companies will buy cars new and get shot after a determined period of time - it's the only sensible way when you're dealing with huge fleets. Of course a Mondeo ST is going to be more expensive compared to a TDCI Zetec model.

I'm on about what millions of private car owners do all the time - buy something a few years old, run for a few years, swallow the cost of a few unexpected jobs themselves, etc etc. By doing things that way you can get something a lot more interesting and satisfying than some blandmobile eurobox. And by picking carefully you can minimise the chance of major things going bang.

Once again - where is the market for this idea?

Where will you get your fleet of cars from? - how much will they cost - and being that they're oddballs, how much are they going to be worth when you sell them?

Have a look at the ex-rental cars in the car supermarkets. Look at the kind of prices they sell for. Well, that's pretty much what the hire company paid for a new one. If not less.

You will *never* be able to get close to the prices offered by the big rental companies if you buy 'interesting' cars on the used market.

People just wouldn't pay a premium to hire something 'interesting' when it's essentially just a more upmarket / premium version of the mainstream they can get from Avis.

Of course, you may well have spotted a niche in the market that's going to make you millions.

Unfortunately, like most of your ideas, it has absolutely no market.

Which you 100% utterley missed the entire point behind. People like you, renting for business were never going to be the target market. Seen as though you did your classic thing and got a little personal dig at Pete, despite the fact he'd said nothing to you, compells me to point out this one post from AVM was more interesting that all of your company car posts put together :-)

Yes Ripspeed special/probably something about modern degrees etc...

Just think about it.

How many people want to rent 80s tat / 'interesting' version of modern cars?

As a proportion of the total rental market, probably less than 1%.

That's not a business. Ahhhm Ooout.

On a more serious note, it wasn't really meant to be a dig - but I'd be more inclined to put the same creative effort into getting laid. Much more fun and less of a financial risk ;-)

Probably, but it doesn't mean we should just rubbish it and not discuss it, this is Usenet not real life, no harm in us all having a think about it. I think if Pete is honest, it's not an idea he was probably going to try and take through to real life - as it would mean he'd have to ditch his current job etc due to time constraints and I doubt he'd even try and pretend he was a good enough mechanic and bodywork fixer heh.

Although I still think there's more people would be interested than you'd think - although I reckon you need a bigger fleet to cover all tastes, including like big old yank Mustangs and stuff and that just would be too much investment at the start. And if you had really nice ones of those - they'd be worth quite a few quid, so are they really suitable to be sent out as rental cars, to be used on a RWYB day at the Pod heh. I know there'd be a clause telling the punters not to, but you know some would.

Hehehe - I said that out loud in my best Bannatyne accent and made myself laugh :-)

To the original question: hadn't Damon Hill not a company hiring rather special cars? P1 or something like that?

I also think there is/was a UK-company hiring MG-cars so that you could drive an MG on Sundays without the usual hassle that seems to trail them like a broken exhaust.

Most supercars get driven less than 2000 miles a year and once in a while a smart businessman sees an opportunity in that. The venture never seems to last long, most often because people who drive a car which is not theirs tend to trash (and often crash) it.

Tom De Moor

JCB Fastrac! Always fancied a go in one of them.

I had a shot of driving some sort of New Holland thing a few years ago. It was fun - but slow.

Apparently you should unlock the diffs before driving on the road.

I've considered doing this a few times, there are a few issues. One is that you need an on call mechanic, two is that the cars will need to be serviced a lot more than they normally would, three is the insurance will be an utter ball-ache, four is that everything you hire is going to be thrashed to within an inch of its life every time it goes out and five is finding the potential hirers.

An M5 would be blown up first time it went out, the 205 would be spun into oblivion, the Xantia would probably survive, the Lexus would end up with scrapes all over it, and an E32 would be a liability.

I'd still love to do it, prices would have to be low enough to compete with regular hire firms and it'd be difficult to avoid people thinking that you're running a "Rent-A-Wreck" operation because there are a few mindless idiots out there who don't realise old cars actually have some value. Another issue would be the amount of damage that would happen on track days, there'll always be a few people who'd hire an M5 and track it whether they're covered to do so or not. I suspect you'd get a lot of mysterious accidents / engine problems near Rockingham, Mallory Park, Thruxton and the like.

But only because no-one would hire it ;-)

Yeah, if you're a girl!

Hehe, I was thinking more that it's not a car you thrash, but you could have a point.

Something like that, but his was for much more exotic stuff, and had quite pricey membership fees - it was more a club type basis.

Heh.

That's the thing - my idea was more like a more desirable version of "rent a wreck" than something stupidly upmarket. "Rent a wreck" type companies wouldn't be able to compete with the big rental companies on price, and nobody would really want a cooking model Mk4 1.3 Escort to rent out for any sort of "retro" or "kitsch" value anyway, so it'd have to be the more fun models in their respective ranges.