Classic cars: money pit or gold mine?

If your classic car is beginning to feel more like a noose around your neck rather than a dream drive, help could be close at hand.  Great Escape is looking for owners to join its growing network of classic cars for hire and production work.  It’s a chance for your car to pay its way rather than get in the way.
Great Escape Classic Car Hire provides cars for hire and TV, film and production work, and you can choose how you want your car to be used.  70% of the 80 hire cars on Great Escape’s rental fleet are hired on behalf of classic car owners and the company is also a major supplier of classic cars to the film and advertising sector, including shows such as the Antiques Road Trip.  The company has seen significant growth since it was set up in 2006 and is now looking for new owners and cars to satisfy customer demand.  In particular Great Escape would like to add cars like Mustangs, Corvettes, classic Ferraris and Lotus Esprits to its classic car hire fleet.
Owners who want to offer their cars for hire can work with Great Escape Classic Car Hire in one of two ways – either placing their car with one of the company’s existing sites or become part of the company’s Owner Operator network and work from home or a local unit.  Income varies depending on the route chosen but Great Escape will provide a financial forecast to help you assess the opportunity.  Great Escape gives you access to specialist insurance and breakdown cover as part of the package.  Whichever route you choose, the relationship is governed by a comprehensive Owner Agreement and all cars are hired subject to a strict Operators Manual, which brings together Great Escape’s experience with hiring cars to the public.
If you don’t fancy the idea of letting someone else drive your car then you can opt to make it available for TV, film and production work only.  This involves leasing the car to the production company for a day or sometimes several weeks.  Great Escape Classic Car Hire has just completed a six week contract to provide a Morris Minor van for a TV series. When you make your car available to Great Escape in this way you can accept or reject an opportunity on a case by case basis.  Great Escape’s experience working with production companies ensures the risks are minimised.
“Classic cars are an expensive hobby,” explains Graham Eason of Great Escape, “and we are finding more and more people coming to us to earn an income to cover their costs.  Because we operate across the full range of income opportunities from classic car hire to production work, owners can work with us in the way that suits them best.
“Our experience working with classic car owners, hirers and production companies means we have developed a system that maximises hire income but minimises the risks.  We are careful who we work with, and who we hire to.”
For more details on Great Escape’s classic car hire business visit http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk.  For the production business visit http://www.greatescapetvcars.co.uk.  Or call 01527 893733 for an information pack.

What's in a name?

The 70s, a decade of naff trouserwear, dodgy disco tunes and fabulous car names. In fact, sometimes it seems as if the 70s stole all the great ones.
Today's car makers are saddled with barrel-scraping constructions like Mondeo, Insight or Kizashi, or simply opt out with letters or numbers. Frankly, 70s man would be appalled.
Back in the era of fuel shortages and long hair a trip to the showroom was a journey into automotive poetry. Avenger, Interceptor, Stag, Spitfire all names that just ooze pure hairy chested, get-in-the-motor machismo. Frankly, if you could buy a Vauxhall Interceptor now or a BMW Stag now, you would wouldn't you?
Sure, the 70s also gave us less illustrious names like Allegro, Marina and Princess but surely even these names, while not ideally matched to the cars they were nailed to, are infinitely preferable to the dull medley of numbers and meaningless conflagrations we are forced to endure nowadays?
Here, for the record, are my favourites from the 70s:
Interceptor - unsurpassed, the Nobel Prize of car nomenclature

Stag - if you must drive a v8 convertible you could hardly call it anything else

Granada - before cheap package tours, could an executive car name be more glamorous for aspiring boardroom dreamers?

Scirocco - German engineering meets Italian style, plus a wind-based name that just works. So well they eventually realised and brought it back

To get the Interceptor or Stag experience you can hire either from us from £195. Visit www.greatescapecars.co.uk or call 01527 893733. 15% off during October 2012.