Fast cars, lean times

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The club, which is called Scuderia 250, will eventually own a fleet of approximately 40 of the world’s best road cars such as the Ferrari.

Is opening a supercar club in a global credit crunch a good idea? Arabian Insight visits the UAE's first, Scuderia 250, to hear the case for the defence.

"Nothing handles like a hire car," I tell Tim Conniff as we leave the warehouse in which he stores about two million dollars worth of supercars, supercars he will shortly be allowing members of the public to drive.

His eyes widen. "No, no," he says, "the people who say that sort of thing are exactly the type of people we don't want. We want car enthusiasts, people who love cars - not idiots who are going to thrash them to death."

Conniff is on the brink of establishing the UAE's first supercar club, with his business partner Alan van Wordragen. Today, the cars - all sleek and expensive expressions of power and grace - sit silently in the warehouse, fully insured and ready for action. The lease on the warehouse is all paid, Conniff says, and members are starting to sign up to the club.

In fact, he has paid for everything up front, mostly out of his own pocket. All he is waiting for on the day that Arabian Insight meets him in late June is to receive his business licence from the Dubai Municipality.

"I'm at a very nervous point, but I am also at a very positive point," he says.

This is the concept: the club, which is called Scuderia 250, will eventually own a fleet of approximately 40 of the best road cars on earth. Members of the club, who will pay between AED75,000 and AED120,000 annually, can drive any of the cars they please for a temporary period, up to a maximum of two weeks at a time. The maximum number of members will be 250, and each membership package is worth a number of points and kilometres, which can be redeemed against the cars on offer.

So, for example, a member who has paid AED120,000 for the top tier "Monaco" package will have 1,500 points to spend over the course of the year, and an allowance of 10,000km. If he wanted to take out the club's top of the range Bentley, doing so would cost him 20 points a day during the summer months, or slightly more during the winter months. The Ferrari California would use more points, the Porsche possibly less. And so on.

It's a nice idea, certainly if you're rich enough to be able to spend AED120,000 on a hobby - AED120,000 for which, after twelve months have elapsed, you will have precisely nothing to show. But then, Dubai is full of that sort of people, isn't it? It certainly used to be. Given the world's current financial landscape, is it still? Surely, membership of Scuderia 250 in 2009 is a luxury to make a billionaire blush...

Not so, says Conniff. He argues that if you're a fan of driving beautiful cars, then membership of the club makes perfect economic sense, and is more defensible, financially, than actually owning a supercar.

He says: "It makes perfect economic sense to join the club. People who love their cars, one way or another, they are going to get behind the wheel. Look, on average, someone who owns a Ferrari 430, he will probably only drive it for an average of 3,000km to 5,000km a year. It's normally their second, third, or fourth car.

"Now, factor in depreciation on an annual basis, servicing costs, insurance, maintenance... let alone buying it. A Ferrari 430 costs 800,000 dirhams. Depreciation is more than twenty percent, but let's say it is twenty percent, that's 160,000 dirhams straight away. Then, insurance is five percent, minimum. It adds up to 200,000 dirhams a year. Forget the cost of buying it. The car hasn't even moved yet, and you have spent 200,000 dirhams. You haven't even serviced it. But our top tier membership is 120,000 dirhams, and for that you can drive as many cars as you like."

Membership of the club, if you are a car lover, is like being a child in the proverbial sweet shop, he says. One day, you can and drive a Lamborghini, the next, a Rolls Royce, and the day after that, an AC Cobra. What's not to like?

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