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Cars
Car-sharing allows marriage of utility, luxury
By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff | November 7, 2004
Tara Diab recently fed a new trend at Zipcar, the Cambridge car-sharing firm. To run lunch-time errands in Somerville from her job on Marlborough Street in the Back Bay, Diab used her Blackberry to rent a gray BMW 325i.
She currently owns three vehicles: a work van, a truck, and a motorcycle. But since becoming a member of Zipcar several months ago, she said, she's selling the bike and the truck and has no plans to buy another vehicle -- ever. Why would she, when she can rent a Beemer one day and a Mini Cooper the next?
"It's way cheaper to do this," she said. "Besides, nobody wants to go on a date in a work van."
Zipcar, it seems, is no longer just a convenient way to wheel the groceries home in unsexy but reliable cars like Civics. With a new emphasis on the utility of luxury, Zipcar now offers high-end vehicles (Zipcar officials call them "mood cars") so customers can impress dates or clients or even test drive the latest coveted roadsters -- all without paying the cruel price of luxury.
There are BMWs, Toyota RAV4s and Highlander SUVs, and Mini Coopers. And while prospective Toyota Prius buyers are placed on waiting lists, Zipcar members are tooling around town in the popular gas-electric hybrid.
But that's not all. Zipcar even removed the company's labels from the fleet after members complained that they didn't want to tell the world they could only afford to rent such luxury, not own it. Even the wireless receivers used to unlock the cars' doors and engines have been hidden, in an attempt to make them as non-Zipcar as possible.
Zipcar members pay a little more for the better rides, with a BMW 325i renting for $90 a day or $12.50 per hour, versus a Honda Civic for $60 a day or $8.50 per hour. But for Zipcar zealots, it's cheaper than the $880 per month that the AAA says it costs, on average, to own and maintain a car.
Christina Michaud, 29, who lives in the South End and teaches writing at Boston University, joined Zipcar about three years ago, during its era of plain cars. But with the models now being offered, she and her husband find themselves lurching toward the finer drives.
"The only car that I drive is a Mini Cooper," she said, adding it's "the only car I feel I can actually park. And it's so fun. I feel happy and friendly in it.
"At first there were just Civics and Golfs," she said. "It was OK, but who wants to rent a Civic and go for a fun drive?"
Matthew Malloy, marketing manager for Zipcar, said the service began to see the change when members decided the Volkswagen Beetle craze was waning and wanted, like Michaud, to drive the next big thing: Mini Coopers.
Eventually, more people began to join Zipcar, not only because they liked the convenience of car-sharing in a city where there are more cars than parking spaces in many neighborhoods, but to get closer to a Mini.
"If we can attract more people to use this, and if we need to put other types of vehicles in the mix to do it, including SUVs and pickup trucks, then we should do it because of the benefit to the community at large," said Scott Griffith, Zipcar's president and chief executive, adding that the luxury models were also purchased as an incentive for businesses to use the service.
Sam Bettis, 26, a Somerville biochemist, had to leave Zipcar recently when he changed jobs but admits to pining for the new car selection after buying a Volkswagen GTI.
"I would go out of my way to drive the nicer cars," he said. He once rented a Prius to impress an environmentally active client at Logan International Airport.
"People wanted fun cars," Malloy said, adding that Zipcar offers up to 20 makes and models, including a new fleet of Volvo S40s.
The strategy seems to be working: Zipcar retains 98 to 99 percent of its members per month.
In addition, all three Zipcar cities -- Boston, New York, and Washington -- turned a profit for the first time in July, Griffith said.
Next step? Zipcar plans in the next several months to be one of the first organizations in the nation to get the new Ford Escape Hybrid, billed as "Earth's first and only full hybrid SUV."
"We're maturing," Griffith said. "We're understanding what it takes to meet the expectations of a very demanding consumer."
Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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