One of the more interesting developments in the classic car hobby, over the past few years, has been the broader expansion of classic car rentals. Early on, there were a handful of companies that popped up in major markets that would offer to rent you a classic car, in the same way that you would go to Hertz and rent an ordinary car. Only rather than renting a mid-sized, generic, slush-bucket you might climb behind the wheel of a convertible Mustang or even a Ferrari 308 GTB. It was an interesting concept, but not particularly practical, unless you lived or travelled in one of the few areas that had one of these stand-alone services. Then recently, Hagerty introduced something called DriveShare and now the entire game appears to have changed.
With DriveShare, classic car owners can register their cars with this online service to be rented out, whenever they like. A prospective renter goes on the site and either enters in a specific type of car they are looking for (1958 DKW 3=6 Sonderklasse? Yep, there was one for rent within 25 miles of my house!) or a geographic location, the site then brings back a listing of all the classics available that fulfill these and/or other criteria (price range, manual/automatic, etc). I have to admit it’s a pretty slick system and a great idea. Where was this when I was exercising any number of automotive demons over the years?! If this had existed 20 years ago, who knows how much time and money I could have saved by quickly working through my brief, but expensive Porsche 356 phase. Had I been able to just drive one for a weekend, I might have gotten it out of my system and not been saddled with a lot of expensive books chronicling the appropriate serial numbers on Pre-A intake manifold bolts (that is a real thing by the way).
