9.15.2006
Noah Lehmann-Haupt of Gotham Dream Cars
At 28, Noah Lehmann-Haupt lives the life most merely dream about. As the founder and president of Gotham Dream Cars, the rental company he started a mere two years ago with one Ferrari and an honest smile has expanded into an inventory of over $2.5 million dollars worth of cars, ranging from Porsches to Lambos.While he makes running Gotham sound easy enough for anyone to do, think again – his company’s currently the only major rental company for exotic sports cars in the northeast, and, with plans to expand to other parts of the country, he’ll soon be pimpin' nationwide.
PW: First, can you tell us a little bit about your company?
NLH: Gotham Dream Cars is New York’s premier exotic car rental company. We deal exclusively with what we call “ultra-exotic sports cars” and luxury cars. In the [automobile] industry, a lot of people use the word “exotic” for a car, especially in the rental business, but it can mean a lot of different things - a lot of people will call a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz an exotic car. We consider those cars luxury, certainly, but our forte is the special cars, the different cars, the ones that people dream about. That’s how we came up with the name Gotham Dream Cars. So we deal with the super brands: Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, Aston Martin, Porsche, you know, that kind of stuff. We’re based here in New York, but we serve the entire northeast. We have several trucks and trailers, and we’ll actually move a car all the way [to the desired destination] – we have cars coming from Boston going down to Washington, DC [for example], so we really sort of span the entire northeast United States.
PW: How did you get started?
NLH: We got started about two and a half years ago. I’m a self-proclaimed car nut (laughs), and there was a sense that there was a demand in this city for this [particular] kind of service. There were a lot of people asking for it, I’m a pretty active member of the car community, and there was not really anybody that provided this service in a real way. And you know, like I said, a lot of the companies out there [would] rent the Mercedes or Escalades or Hummers, but you know, there are a lot of people that wanna drive the “ultra” cars. So we started up with just a Ferrari and grew from there, and we’ve been growing steadily ever since.
PW: What did you do before that? Or did you just say, “I want to start a car company. I’m gonna get this Ferrari and work it out!”NLH: (laughs) Well, I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. [When] I started, I was working at a software company up in Massachusetts, and we sold that to another company here in New York, and I moved down to New York to help out with that transition a little bit, decided that I wanted to do something different, then the idea kind of came to me, and that was it! So I wasn’t really in the car business or anything, just sort of a car nut, looking for something fun to do.
PW: How’d you swing that? You don’t just say, “I have a Ferrari, so if you wanna rent it…”
NLH: Well of course, in the beginning, we had to ask people to trust us. Now we have so many hundreds of satisfied customers that we have a testimonial section on our website and you can see lots of pictures of it, and I mean my issue is, we’ve been around for 2 and a half years, almost three years now, and we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t doin’ a really great job and having some really terrific cars. The market has a wonderful way of getting rid of those who don’t belong, and we’re, you know, sticking around.
PW: Tell us about the obstacles that got in the way of building this company?
NLH: Sure, I mean you know, everyone believes that it’s all fun and games, and a lot of people always call me up and say “man, I wish I could be you, I wish I could start this business” but the reality is that there are a lot of ups and downs to this – ya know, cars get broken a LOT. These cars are incredibly finicky, and we spend an enormous amount of money both insuring them and repairing them, just because of the nature of this business. So there are, you know, as much fun as it is to occasionally drive around and be able to deal with and play with these cars, you know, there’s the downsides of having to deal with when they break, angry customers, and people being late - you know, all that kind of stuff. So it’s a challenge always – when you’re in a luxury business, customer service is SO important, and so it’s a challenge sometimes when the cars don’t play along, but we do our best, and we work with what we have.
PW: What are the perks of having a supercar rental company? Yea. I mean, the perks are pretty clear, you know? I mean, I have 14 of the world’s best cars in my garage that I can pretty much use at any time, which is pretty much the perk, and it’s a lot of fun. And I’m a car nut, and you know, to be 28 years old, and have access to…
PW: Damn! You’re only 28??
NLH : Haha, yea…I’m only 28, so to have access to a 2+ million dollar car collection is pretty cool. But I think the other perks are meeting some really, really amazing people. And I think one of the fun things about this business, and one of the programs we’re actually about to launch, is a program called our Dream Share Club - it’s sort of a subprogram of our rental business, I guess if I could sort of say I’m selling the experience of owning all of these cars. You pay a fixed rate - it’s very similar to the rest of the other organizations, like the Classic Car Club that a lot of people are familiar with. But you pay a fixed annual fee, and you really have access to the entire fleet of cars at any time, and you have a certain number of days per year that you’re allowed to use it. But it’s really sort of an all-you-can-eat menu on the vehicles, so really you just pay a fee, you get involved, you can call us up at anytime and say, “today I’m feelin’ like taking the Bentley out, I’ve got a date tonight, and you know, tomorrow, I’ll take the Aston Martin for a couple of days.” So it’s really a cool experience; you get a fixed number of days that you’re allowed to take the car, but it’s much more relaxing than renting cause you don’t have to sign a whole sheet of paperwork every time you take the car out, you don’t have to give us credit cards all the time [etc.] - it just takes the hassle away and basically lets you buy into the experience of doing what we do: having a garage full of cars at all times.
PW: Who are your main customers?
NLH: We serve everyone. I mean, there’s really not one single group. There are a lot of companies out there that will say, “We focus on the music community” and whatnot, but we’re [for] everyone. Our customers include small business owners, like guys who own very successful plumbing businesses, and who have done very well for themselves, maybe not to the point where they’re going to go out and buy ten exotic cars, but certainly where they can enjoy them.
We do a lot of birthday and anniversary presents, you know, very thoughtful wives and girlfriends getting their husbands and boyfriends and siblings gifts, we deal certainly with some people in the music community, and some athletes - we’ve got a couple of New York Rangers that are pretty regular customers of ours - you know it’s a little bit of everyone. We have some guys who you probably don’t want to ask what they do, and they don’t tell us what they do, and they rent from us; I mean, it’s really a little bit of everything. So we’re pretty pleased, and certainly there are a lot of cool stories that come from working with our customers.PW: What are your plans for the future?
NLH: We are currently engaged in a growth plan. We’re expanding to other cities around the country, and we’re really excited about that. We’re about to announce a pretty big partnership agreement with another rental company to work very closely with them, and we’re gonna be building the Gotham Dream Cars brand across multiple cities. That’s what I’m really excited about, and that’s what the focus of my time is on right now: growing the business, and providing a bigger opportunity for everyone.
PW: Are you thinking of expanding to, like, perhaps maybe a concierge service - jets, things like that?
NLH: That’s a very good question, but no. I have a focus: I want to be the service provider for cars. So I know that there are a lot of different directions that companies can go, and do an all-you-can-eat concierge service, but that’s not really my interest right now. I’d like to work with concierge services [though] - I want to be on the speed dial of all the major concierge companies. In other words, my goal is to be THE provider for ultra-exotic cars anywhere. So at any point, if a hotel needs to speak with us, if a private concierge needs to speak with us, you know, if they need a car, you dial one number, anywhere, and be able to deal with Gotham Dream Cars, and we’ll provide them with tremendous service and a tremendous vehicle as well. So that’s really our plan right now.
PW: You always have the perks available when you have this company, you have all these benefits, but do you ever actually get time to party? NLH: Yea, that’s definitely one of the good perks. One of the cool services that we provide is sort of a barter service. I work with a lot of club promoters and managers at restaurants and whatnot in the city, and it’s a pretty simple exchange: if you’re doing the opening of a new club or you have a big night, we can, with the snap of our fingers, have ten Ferraris and Lamborghinis parked in front of the club - and that’s not something you see in New York very often. Maybe in LA it’s a pretty regular occurrence, but not [here]. So we’ve done that for a number of places, and for that I have a very simple formula: as long as my business partners and I maybe get a nice table in the back for us to have a good evening, we’ll work out a nice deal as far as that goes. And I’ve done that quite a bit, and that works out pretty nicely.
PW: Yeah that'll work. We call that putting a deposit in the "Favor bank"
NLH: Yea, it’s a fair exchange for everyone. But we also have a lot of paying clients who deal with that stuff as well; we do a lot of special events all around, [though] bartering is always something I’m interested in doing. We have assets, and we want to get as much as we can out of them, but I think the primary exciting business of renting cars is just what keeps us goin’.
PW: What are some of the benefits that you have in terms of charity and giving back?
NLH: We have a very heavy involvement with a number of charities. We do a couple things. One, we work with the Ronald McDonald house from time to time to give a lot of the kids there what we call Dream Rides: we take them out for a day and take them in a whole bunch of cars and take them for a spin, [which] has been a huge success.
A PimpWiz Exclusive By, Alyson Mance
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