You know those companies that sell exotic car driving experiences? Where you can pay some money to drive a Lamborghini or Porsche or GT-R or a Corvette or whatever? Those are great, sure, and they give a lot of us time in cars we could never afford, but they come with a pretty deep inherent flaw. But I think I know a way to fix it.
The problem with these exotic car driving experiences is part of why they even exist at all: the cars you’d pay to drive for one of these events are far, far better than the car you own. And, after it’s done, you’re driving home in whatever miserable shitbox you rolled up in.
The result of this is that these events can do nothing but create a feeling of grim, defeated dissatisfaction in the client. If you spend three hours whipping a Ferrari around a track, and then climb back in your Nissan Versa to go home, think about how that must feel. The loss, the emptiness, the envy.
Think about the intense sense of disappointment when they step on that Camry’s acellerator after two hours in a GT-R. Think about the painful realization about how much better driving can be, and the grim acknowledgement that such delights will likely forever remain out of easy reach.
This is no way to leave a client.
But there’s a solution, and it’s cheap and easy: for every driving experience that puts you in something ethereal and exotic, like a McLaren or Bugatti or whatever, it needs to be followed with a bonus driving experience that puts you in some miserable shitbox.
Consider this: you pay for a track day in a Porsche, and then, after that experience, they stick you in a 1972 Ford Pinto with bald tires and spray the track down with water, giving you the experience of trying to control a gripless hunk of crap with a gas tank you know is just looking for the slightest excuse to explode.
Or maybe you could have the option of getting into a 1994 Hyundai Excel with a plastic bag for a driver’s side window and a radio stuck at full volume on AM720, a station that’s mostly static and half-audible Bible lessons.
The point is to make you feel good when you get back to your own humble car. Sure, you’ll still have the experience of driving a machine crafted from the start for the pure experience of driving, but you’ll also ride that pendulum to the other end of the spectrum, so when you get back to your car, that feeling of loss you have will be well-tempered with one of gratitude, since you’ll know how much worse it could really be.
Or, if you just want to tarnish the glorified images of those supercars to something that matches closer to reality, they could append a session with the car after the initial track session to dull some of the lustre.
Let’s say you just had an amazing track day in an Audi R8. After that, you’d be escorted to another R8, and sent off to drive around on a section of track with low speed bumps and potholes and other irregular pavement, making the drive a low-speed, nerve-wracking experience as you try not to damage the front lip.
Then, the car will just shut down on you, and a pair of employees dressed as Audi service techs will approach you and hand you a bill for $7800, because your magnetic ride control system is boned, immobilizing the car, and three out of four of your magnetic shocks need replacement.
I bet when you get in your own reasonably well-maintained, reasonable-to-repair car, it’ll feel like you’ve just woken up from a nightmare, and you’ll have that intoxicating feeling of realization that the horror is not, and never was, real.
Other similar exciting experiences could include drives in Ferraris guaranteed to catch on fire after 15 minutes, and Tesla Model Xes that trap you inside with failures of the falcon doors.
The result of all of this is that customers will leave their driving experience happy, not envious or bitter or feeling like sad failures. It’s the best of everything—a taste of a nearly unobtainable good life and a harsh swallow of a possible, but so far avoided, much worse automotive fate.
It’s perfect. Contact me for franchise opportunities.