Time-Share Maserati
New startups allow shared ownership of cars, yachts - February 1, 2007
If you were to buy the car of your dreams - say, a Porsche 911 GT3 (sticker price, $106,000) - the odds are you’d drive it about 30 days a year and cover maybe 1,000 miles. Those are widely accepted metrics in the exotic-car industry, reflecting the reality that you don’t fire up a Porsche 911 to pick up groceries. For boats the numbers are even more stark - most are used just ten to 20 days in season. The rest of the time they gather barnacles while you pay for insurance and maintenance.As a result, high-end luxury products are increasingly being offered in fractional-ownership or shared-access deals. The model started out with real estate time-shares in the 1970s, spread to private jets in the last decade, and is now being applied to sports cars, boats, RVs, helicopters, even handbags and jewelry.
There is a market for everything.