Feature: Dream Cruise
February 1, 2008
Gotham Dream Cars rents cars, but
Avis it isn’t. The company is to a typical rental counter what Harry Winston is
to a typical jewelry store. From its offices on the west side of Manhattan and
in tony Delray Beach, Florida, halfway between Palm Beach and Miami, Gotham
Dream Cars has made a name for itself by hiring out exotic vehicles by the
weekday, weekend, or full week. According to company founder and president Noah
Lehmann-Haupt, Gotham’s exotic cars rent to all sorts of people for all the
usual reasons—big birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, high-school reunions, you
name it. But for the true automotive enthusiast, Gotham’s most irresistible
offering may be its new Dream Car Tour. An exotic-car sampler, the tour promises
20 to 30 minutes behind the wheels of a half-dozen of the world’s most
exceptional sporting cars—all for less than the cost of a standard one-day
rental.
What makes Gotham’s tour innovative is that it takes place on
wild and woolly public roadways (see Fantastic Five), rather than on
the picture-perfect one-way asphalt of a rented racetrack, as some other
supercar-experience outfits do (see A Day in the Life). Notes
Lehmann-Haupt: "The Dream Tour gives people who might be intimidated by a track
day the chance to drive exotic cars on real roads. This isn’t about racing. It’s
not the speed that’s exciting. It’s just the experience of being in the car, the
looks you get from people on the road, the pointing and the gawking—that’s what
really makes this event fun."
The day starts with a safety briefing, during which Lehmann-Haupt gently but
firmly outlines a code of conduct that begins and ends—as it would at a track
event—with safety. "This tour is a disaster if it’s not safe," he says, "because
we’ve got six time-bombs sitting out there." And yet, despite a sobering
cautionary tale or two (ask him about Gotham’s short-lived Ford GT),
Lehmann-Haupt and the Gotham crew are anything but wet blankets. "Rule number two,"
he says with a smirk, "is have
fun. It’s not quite as important as the
number-one rule [drive safely], but it’s more important than all the
others."
Our transportation for the day (five cars for this impromptu
excursion, rather than the usual six) included an Aston Martin DB9 Volante, a
Bentley Continental GTC, a Ferrari F430 Spider, and a pair of Lamborghinis—a
Murciélago Roadster and a metallic-orange Murciélago coupe with a cacophonous
aftermarket exhaust. A quick primer on the basic operation and quirks of each
from Gotham’s sharp and personable teammates and we’re off, a $1.3-million
parade of modern art blatting through downtown Delray Beach before swinging left
and howling southward on Interstate 95. Seeing such splendiferous shapes on
their respective showroom floors or motor-show turntables, or even pawing the
immaculate tarmac of a race circuit, can never quite prepare one for the
staggering sight and sound of five of them, en masse, commingling with Toyota
Camrys and Ford F-150s on regular roads. It’s gods come down to
earth.
Our cars feature either automatic transmissions or
paddle-operated sequential manual gearboxes. Gotham tends to avoid traditional
manual transmissions unless there’s no alternative (the Porsche 911 GT3, for
instance). This opens the tour to drivers with no experience (or interest) in
stick-shifting, and spares the cars the expensive indignity of a cremated
clutch.
The tour employs simple lead-and-follow rules. Between a Gotham
lead car and a pickup truck support vehicle at the rear, there’s no set order
for the supercars; drivers are free (within the boundaries of common sense and
legality) to shuffle their order at will. Gotham has smartly equipped tour cars
with two-way radios, a move that transforms what might otherwise be a few
solitary (albeit blissful) hours into a unique social occasion. Gotham team
members check in with drivers and note upcoming turns, hazards, and points of
interest, and drivers have the opportunity to interact with each other, exchange
vehicle commentary and, of course, share law-enforcement sightings. Gotham knows
its stomping grounds well and conducts us over a compelling mix of wide-open
stretches of Interstate, serpentine back-roads, and even amusingly congested
Main Street areas. (What fun is living large if no one sees you doing it?)
But as inspirational as our roster of vehicles is,
Lehmann-Haupt is quick to note that he is constantly revising his wish list to
keep the Gotham collection as au
currant as the pages of Top Gear or
Quattroruote. "Our Maserati GranTurismo is on its way, and we’ve ordered
our Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren; from there we’d really like to push it to the
next level. I think we need a Rolls-Royce Phantom, and I’d love to see us add a
Pagani Zonda and maybe a Bugatti Veyron."
The Gotham Dream Car Tour costs $895 for a single participant,
with or without a non-driving passenger, or $595 for dual participants, each
driving three of the six cars. The company conducts Dream Tours on a seasonal
basis, scheduling events April through October in the New York area, and
November through March in Florida.
Gotham Dream Cars, 877.246.8426,
www.gothamdreamcars.com
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