Traveling with pomp and show is no longer a distant dream with luxury car rental companies opening the doors for deep pockets. While the limo still remains the most expensive rental option, the Funk Wagon is trending in young circles. Nikhil Dawar speaks with service providers to bring you a report
Dad ki Maruti is no longer ‘chalega’ for gen-next which fantasises about luxury cars and what not on their first date. They want the perfect restaurant with an ambience, good food and a posh car to travel in. While the hotel and the food is right there, luxury cars on hire has been a little bit of a problem. But no longer so. With car rental companies mushrooming in the city, this too seems to have been taken care of.
From the uber expensive limousine (chargeable at Rs 1lakh for 80 km!) to the chic Funk Wagon that has an entire pub inside the vehicle itself, replete with disco lights and surround sound (priced at an unbelievable Rs 70,000 for just four hours), the roads in Delhi are getting snazzier.
It’s not just the dating circle which feels the need to ride in style, even grooms want to give their newly weds a safar to remember. “During the marriage season, our phones don’t stop ringing. There is a huge demand for the Mercedes E Class and Jaguars which we rent out on an hourly basis. While the Merc comes with a convent-educated chauffeur and is priced at Rs 16,000, the Jaguar is slightly more expensive at Rs 22,000 per hour. We also have a fixed guideline on how the customer can decorate the car for the wedding night,” Sunil Malhotra, managing director of Maitre Car Rentals in Ashok Vihar, says. He claims that in one season, he gets almost 20 customers a month.
When there is no shaadi, there are business trips where people prefer to travel and close deals within the confines of their cars. “It is routine for businessmen traveling from Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai. The meeting is usually a top secret one in which papers are signed and discussed in a hush-hush tone within the car. Our chauffeurs drop these people off at expensive five-star hotels and are happy with the tip they get for this short journey,” Malhotra tells you.
He adds that sometimes if it is his day, the driver comes back, having taxied a celebrity from the airport to his destination. “We have happily served Amitabh Bachchan and Sidharth Basu, ferrying them from the airport whenever they are in Delhi on Kaun Banega Crorepati work. Apart from them, a number of TV channels contact us to provide pick-ups-and-drops to their hosts. The Aap Ki Aadalat cast and crew have often utilised our services,” he adds.
The international tourists are mostly into big SUVs and Hummers and don’t mind taking the car for an outstation trip. Agra and nearby areas are preferred destinations. “Many of our tourists prefer the Hummer whenever they are travelling out of Delhi because it is huge car,” Pankaj Verma from State Express Rentals says. At Rs 15,000 per day, this is quite a deal for both.
What makes these luxury car rental companies thrive is the fact that the customer doesn’t have the additional headache of maintenance. “The liability lies with the service provider. The cars are insured as commercial vehicles and the chauffeur, too, is fully covered. In addition to this, the car has a third party insurance. In short, the customer need not be unnecessarily bothered,” Verma says.