At Your Disposal

Source: NY Times

AN old-style Ferrari or a Porsche 911 — those were the sweet toys on Randy Bunkley’s shopping list three years ago. But then he looked at the numbers again and decided they did not add up.

“While I don’t want to say I’m a typical accountant, to a certain degree I am,” said Mr. Bunkley, a 35-year-old senior manager at Ernst & Young in San Francisco. “There’s a practicality in owning cars like this,” he said. Sometimes, they “don’t make a lot of sense.”

So instead of buying them, Mr. Bunkley decided to simply drive them. And now his choices include the Ferrari and the Porsche along with a Lamborghini, Jaguar, Maserati, Bentley and a dozen other sports or exotic cars.

Mr. Bunkley doesn’t own any of these cars. Instead, he uses them as a member of Club Sportiva, a San Francisco company that has brought the time-share concept to expensive automobiles.

Club Sportiva, in business since 2003, is one of many time-share or fractional ownership clubs popping up across the country. Among them are the Classic Car Club in Manhattan, the Otto Club in the Boston area, Exotic Car Share and Curvy Road near Chicago, the Van Horssen Group in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Privatus in Charlotte, N.C.

“It’s definitely a growing market,” said Jamie Cheng, a co-founder of Helium Report, a San Francisco company and Web site, heliumreport.com, that offers guides to buying time in luxury vacation homes, private jets and exotic cars.

The market, Mr. Cheng said, is “the young man who is doing well financially, has discretionary income, is looking for something fun to do on a weekend with his buddies, and will sign up and say, ‘You know what, I don’t see any reason to own a $200,000 Ferrari, but I’d love to drive one.’ ”

All the clubs offer members a chance to get behind the wheel of the world’s most prized automobiles, without the cost or hassle of ownership.

As John Caron, the president of the Otto Club, said: “Ownership is not the privilege. Access is the privilege. Ownership is the burden.”

The burden is particularly cumbersome in cities like New York, where alternate-side-of-the-street parking is not an option for cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and where private-parking fees can be exorbitant.

Brian Flynn, 37, said that was why he joined the Classic Car Club when it opened in 2005. He lives in Manhattan and runs a firm that helps small companies with marketing and business development; he uses the club as a perk for clients and employees as well as for himself.

“I’m not the person to buy the latest BMW 6-Series or anything like that,” said Mr. Flynn, who recently took his wife and two children to a party in the Hamptons in a Rolls-Royce. “I’m the person who says, ‘I’d love an old car that has something to it, some style and panache to it.’ But as a Manhattanite, you can’t buy an old car. You need something that’s dependable that you can park in your garage. And this way I let them take care of it.”

The clubs take care of everything from buying the car to the time-consuming maintenance, cleaning and storage of each car. Some provide insurance coverage as well. They offer lessons in driving the cars, often employ full-time mechanics and give roadside service. And time-share customers don’t have to worry about depreciation.

Some clubs offer even more amenities. The Classic Car Club has a clubhouse in SoHo for entertaining, provides members opportunities to drive on racetracks and participate in road rallies and is adding helicopter pilot lessons. Club Sportiva also has a clubhouse, as well as an affiliation with the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Each year, members have a chance to drive Formula 1 racecars on the track. The club also brokers deals for members who want to buy exotic cars or sports cars.

The Van Horssen Group recently offered members a fishing trip to Colorado. Membership in the Otto Club includes golfing at a premier club.

Clubs’ prices vary considerably. Some, like Club Sportiva, the Otto Club and Classic Car Club, use point systems. At Sportiva, members pay a one-time fee of $500 along with an annual membership fee, which ranges from $3,195 to $12,495, depending on the number of points the member wants. It costs more in points to drive the most expensive cars — including the Lamborghini.

The Otto Club offers a point-system membership at $18,000 or $28,000 a year. The Classic Car Club charges a one-time fee of $1,500 with membership levels from $7,000 to $10,500. Privatus, the start-up in Charlotte, is planning to charge a $65,000 entry fee and $7,500 annual dues for a total of 100 days of driving a year.

Other clubs operate differently. The Exotic Car Club’s Classic Car Share program costs $250 to join for five years but operates more like a pay-as-you-go service: members are charged $990 to $1,880, depending on the car and the length of time they want it. Exotic also offers a separate fractional ownership club called Curvy Road; members can buy one-fifth or one-tenth shares of a classic car.

Van Horssen requires a one-time $2,000 fee and members must maintain a balance of $8,000 to $40,000.

Membership is not a given in any of these clubs. Each candidate must undergo a background check before being admitted. Exotic Car Share leads with more than 600 members. Classic Car Club and Club Sportiva have about 200 members each.

Many clubs are expanding, or are moving into other cities. Sportiva, which has clubhouses in San Francisco, San Jose and Munich, Germany, is planning a New York addition. The Otto Club is eyeing the market in Greenwich, Conn. Exotic Car Share has an office in Huntington on Long Island. The Classic Car Club, which is affiliated with the London-based Classic Car Club and has reciprocal agreements for members to use cars in Scotland and Australia, is planning a Los Angeles club, too. The Van Horssen Group is also opening a branch in Los Angeles.

The competition is just beginning for a business that didn’t exist a few years ago. But the hope is that there are more car enthusiasts like Mr. Bunkley and Mr. Flynn who want to buy a luxury time share.

For Mr. Bunkley, it makes a statement.

“Going to the opera in my Mercedes is nice,” he said. “Going in the Bentley is nicer.”

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