WCD-One Day, Six Exotics and Anyone Can Do It

There they are, lined up like exotic seafood entrees on the planet's most glorious buffet table: Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster, Callaway C16, Ferrari F430 Spider, Ford GT, Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder and Spyker C8. It's the sort of smorgasbord we all dream of facing — and there's nothing between you and the delicacies. Not even a sneeze guard.

"You know they're all rentals," says the anonymous-looking, Dockers-wearing guy. "I know," I respond. "I'm one of the guys renting them. Sort of."

With that he looks at me with a sort of envious incredulity, crosses the hotel parking lot and heads straight into the Westlake Village Hyatt where I'm sure he's going to spend the day listening to paper company product presentations. Sucker.

No PowerPoint presentations for me. Not today. Today I'm going to drive these exotics around the Southern California hills between Westlake and Malibu, thanks to the guys at World Class Driving (WCD).

WCD is set up as a club that maintains a fleet of between 10 and 14 exotics. That fleet then roves the country (by transporter) descending on locations where club members can drive the cars a half-day at a time along surrounding public roads, for the measly sum of $1,495.

There's no way that this is going to be a bad day.

Affordable Exotics
Head on over to your local Ferrari dealer and you can buy a new F430 for $211,525 — plus tax and license and whatever extortionate mark-up the dealer feels he can suck out of you. Or you can rent one from Beverly Hills Rent-A-Car for $2,500 a day plus $2 for every mile past the first 50. Um, of course you'll also have to pay for any gas the F430 slurps at the rate of 11 mpg in the city and 16 on the highway. Cede this to World Class Driving: There simply is no less expensive way to experience the latest exotic cars.

Last year World Class put together 83 driving events and it's on course to do as many as 140 (30 percent of which are corporate events for companies looking to motivate their employees) in the United States this year. The Westlake Village event counted as WCD's 53rd during the 2008 calendar year.

The cars themselves are always rotating in order to keep the latest stuff in the fleet — they usually rotate out after they've accumulated between 16,000 and 20,000 miles on their odometers, says WCD co-founder Jean Paul Libert. "We operate like a race team," Libert continues. "But because you're behind the wheel of an exotic doesn't mean you have to be an aggressive driver."

Who, me? Aggressive. Not with the waiver WCD had me sign promising not to do any burnouts or donuts or hard launches or any other speedy exhibitions. It also brought with it a $5,000 deductible should I do any damage to a car. "Hey," I thought silently to myself as that was explained to me, "If it looks like there's $4,500 damage to the car, I might as well go ahead, have some fun and total it."

Of course WCD reserves the right to not put traffic felons, drunks or hyperactive teenagers behind the wheels of its cars. And if you do something moronic during the drive, they'll yank you out and call you a cab.

Group Driving
With seven drivers and six cars in the driving rotation, I actually start the day riding shotgun with WCD's chief driving instructor Didier Theys in the rented Chrysler 300 being used to pace the pack. The Chrysler 300 may not be all that exotic, but how often do you get to ride with a Belgian legend who has driven CART Champ Cars and won both the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring?

Leaving the hotel, Theys sets a relatively swift pace in the under-tired and underpowered beige Chrysler. Rising up through Thousand Oaks toward the Mulholland Highway, he rarely has the 300 dipping below 35 mph as he speeds along with all the smoothness expected of a world-class endurance racer. But he never goes faster than 60 either. Still, that's enough to absolutely run away from the driver behind us in the Ferrari.

The truth is, when you drive in a group, you can only go as fast as the guy in front of you. And in my group, the slowest guy is really, really slow...like dead dog slow. I couldn't even have imagined it was possible to go that slow in a Gallardo.

And the Slow Guy becomes the recurring theme of the day and a topic of endless discussion — all strictly whispered behind his back, of course.

Perspective Dealt Here
But if Slow Guy is the day's obstacle, everything else is dang wonderful. Driving swiftly and smoothly, and well within these high-performance cars' limits, you do get a feel for each of their personalities. "I wasn't expecting the Ferrari to feel so nimble," says Jeff Kenney, 26, who brought along his brother, Casey, 24. "I was expecting it to be, well...I don't know what I was expecting. But it was better than I expected."

Jeff Kenney drives a modified S2000, so he's a guy who's used to a car with quick reflexes and likely expected that a car with quick reflexes would handle a lot like his Honda roadster. But expectations seldom line up perfectly with reality.

"Most of what I had heard about how Ferraris are, I had heard from guys who are hard-core Ferrari lovers," Jeff Kenney explains. "So I sort of discounted it. But the Ferrari was fun to drive. And it was easy to drive."

What World Class delivers is perspective. It's the nasty whack that comes every time the Gallardo's transmission is triggered and the heavy feel of its steering. It's how the Ford GT feels like the relatively large car that it is and rides like a Town Car compared to the other exotics. It's the scream of the high-winding Ferrari and Aston V8s in sharp contrast to the low-end grunt of the Ford GT's supercharged, large-displacement V8.

In sum, it is all about knowing by lunchtime that in your soul you're not a Lambo guy, but a Ferrari dude. It's knowing that while you'll never turn down a chance to drive an Aston Martin or get behind the wheel of a Ford GT, they're not the cars you'd empty your IRA to own. It's the difference between being an enthusiast and being someone who actually knows what he's talking about.

Plus, of course, it's a plain good time. "It's awesome," summarizes Jeff Kenney at the end of the day. "The most fun I've ever had."

Oh yeah, fun. In fact, Jeff Kenney paid for his brother Casey as a birthday present — and it's a hell of a birthday present. My brother got me bookends for my last birthday. They're no fun at all.

It's on the Bucket List
After a day with World Class Driving, the bottom line about what the club offers is this: You go to your grave being able to say you drove some really exotic cars. When your friends start bench racing, you'll be the one who can say, "Well, when I drove the Gallardo, I was really impressed by how it bit coming out of tight turns." When you hear others wistfully dreaming about some day driving an Italian thoroughbred like the F430, you can chime in and let them know that it's really better than they even imagined. Go ahead, rub it in.

It can even go on your tombstone. There are, after all, worst epitaphs than "He once drove a Ferrari."

In short, it satisfies your curiosity. And that sort of satisfaction is cheap at $1,500.