For the Record: 28:50 - A journey toward self-discovery and the Cannonball Run Record

by Ed Bolian

  When I got back there was still no progress. I was finally able to get in touch with Lucky. He agreed to return the car for $5,000. I had been in communication with the police officers running the case so I told them about the request. Their answer was to ask Lucky if he would take a check. Then they said to stop payment on the check after I gave it to him and got the car back. I reminded them that bouncing a check for that amount of money is a felony but they told me not to worry about it. Law enforcement at work.

  Lucky was happy to take a check. We met at the sketchy downtown parking lot where he had stashed the car. The battery was completely dead so I called a tow truck to take it back to my warehouse. He was cordial and helpful. He even brought out a Maserati that he had purchased more legitimately that was some seafoam green metallic color repaint. The paint has falling off in square foot chunks so I gave him a body shop recommendation.

  I am not one for gun ownership and personal protection. I don’t value my life enough to invest a lot of money, time, and energy into assembling a personal arsenal. I did marry into a one family militia though. I had called my father-in-law of one week and asked him to follow me to the meeting just in case things went a bit pear shaped. I later found out that this was not the best foot forward in my burgeoning marriage to his daughter. Resentment has to start somewhere I suppose.

  Everything was fairly uneventful. After we parted ways I got a call from my bank. “There is a guy here trying to cash a check very suspiciously,” the very polite representative of the bank asked calmly.

  “Oh yeah, that is an extortion payment for the return of stolen property. Please do not honor that request and destroy the check. There should be a stop payment in your system as well.” She was happy to oblige. Lucky was not. He showed up at my warehouse a few hours later, made some empty threats, and we parted ways. I never heard from him or the customer that had rented the car again. I did get his insurance to pay the $30k to fix the Gallardo though. On to the next one.

  Chapter 6

  Lawyers, Politicians, and Used Car Salesmen

  I met Alex Roy for the first time in early 2008. He was in Atlanta for a BMW event organized by a mutual friend. We shared a three minute conversation I am sure was easily dismissed. He was in town to take part in the setting of another record. It was one of his stops around the country promoting his recently released book.

  The mutual friend was named Mitch DeFrancis and he was organizing an attempt to break the record for the longest convoy of cars from a single make - in this case BMW. I had actually helped Mitch locate and finance a very similar 2000 E39 chassis BMW M5 to the one Alex Roy used to set his transcontinental record just two years prior. Alex was in attendance to serve as a lead pace car for the event. He was cordial even after Mitch and I had relayed my interest in breaking his record one day.

  Later that year Alex and I spoke at greater length. I dug into my phone book, found the number stored from the Gumball photo gallery, and placed a call to him where I reminded him that one day I was going to make my own attempt. At the moment I had a different request.

  One of my frequent rental customers loved my Rosso Corsa Ferrari 360 Spider. He would rent it once every month or so, generally often enough to keep up the appearance to his friends that he owned it. One of his car guy friends was arguing with him that the obsession that he had for the 360 was foolish because of the new bargain performance option of the 505 hp Chevrolet Corvette C6 Z06. It was the amorous affinity of every car magazine at the time and it was winning most comparisons.

  The customer called me and said he wanted to rent my car and his friend wanted to rent a Z06. They wanted to “race cross country.” He had been to my warehouse and seen the S55 that I intended to use for the record myself and he actually wanted to make it a three way race with me in play as well, betting the rental charges. I told him I was not quite ready to make my own attempt yet but I would look into what it would take to put something like that together.

  Of course this type of rental usage was not something I was excited to hear but I was truly not in a financial position to impulsively turn down any big business propositions. I decided to figure out how much it would take for a booking like this to make sense and give them an offer. I also told them that I was [loosely] friends with the guy that currently held the record for doing this and that I would contact him to work on the best preparation for the cars. Of course this was a self serving proposition because I fully expected the astronomical rental rate I would propose to cause their interest in this idea to subside rather quickly.

  The quote came to about $25k per car to which they gracefully and thankfully bowed away. The conversation with Alex was great though. He was as against the idea of this as a race as I was but he was still extremely helpful. Every conversation I had with Alex prior to my own attempt was totally forthcoming, friendly, and positive with the ever-present demand not to hurt myself or anyone else. He, like everyone else who had ever been associated with the Cannonball pursuit, was very proud of the safety record of the pursuance of the idea.

  The only known injury in 45 years is a broken arm from an all girl team in the 70s that ran off the road in an undramatic one car incident. I do not think seat belts were in play. I believe this was the team where the racy nylon driving suits worn by the Countach movie girls came from, pink in the real life example. If my head fit inside and I could touch a single pedal at a time, I don’t think I could resist the allure of a Countach.

  Alex and I talked at length about car prep and countermeasures. I had read his book and knew generally how he had done it. We discussed which systems worked well, which ones did not, and what further improvements might be possible. The main topic we discussed was actually verification. He was very critical of the lack of verification offered by Richard Rawlings and was proud to have full video of the entire drive. No one has ever had the interest or patience to watch it all but if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it I suppose a lumberjack can still claim the kill.

  In this rental race scenario I would need to officiate who won. I told him about the satellite tracking devices I kept in the cars and asked him if he would have any issue with that. He agreed it would be the most conclusive and easily shared form of proof available. It had not been available on a consumer level when he tried it or he said he would have used it.

  As the rental race proposition fizzled out, the steam of business for Supercar Rentals was starting to quiet as well. From the time when I started the company in 2006 to that point in 2008, the US Economy had experienced a surge and then a massive decline. Depreciation in luxury assets was at an all time high, dealerships were closing, new car sales were down, financing was difficult, and as other businesses struggled it became less and less socially acceptable to be seen driving around in an outrageously colored expensive automobile.

  That decline had actually helped the rental business. I was selling my usage product as an ownership alternative. Renting a car for $1,500 per day was a lot cheaper than the real cost of owning one. People were paying me to rent my cars because it was a more intelligent decision than paying a quarter of a million dollars to own one. These were higher quality people than the normal impress-someone-for-the-night crowd so I enjoyed that fortuitous circumstance. It did well until it didn’t anymore.

  Early in 2009 prices had bottomed out. Even five years later as I begin writing this, the prices for Gallardos, Murcielagos, Ferrari 360s, 550 Maranellos, and others were still higher than they could have been bought for back then. The market recognized this and people started buying again. That meant my rental customer base shifted from people who were cleverly beating the depreciation game into those whose credit was so bad they could not take advantage of the inexpensive cars that were widely available in the marketplace. That lower caliber of person meant the cars were no longer being treated well, collection of payment was more difficult, and bookings were much more last minute.

  People look at the daily rental rates o
f exotic cars and the normal finance payments for a 60 or 72 month term and assume the profit must be insane. They estimate that the cars must go out 10-20 days per month so I must have been rolling in the dough. Of course, the real numbers of days out per month for most exotic car rental companies is 3-8 so the margins remain fairly slim.

  The Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine named me one of the “30 Alumni under 30 Making a Name for Themselves.” My vocation was a far cry from anything requiring a Public Policy degree but I appreciated that they found my current life situation interesting enough to tout. I framed a copy and put it in our office at the house. They had a great picture of me in front of a couple of the Ferraris and the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo. It was fast becoming an ironic image.

  Megan and I were struggling financially and the quality of our marriage reflected that. She could see the stress the business was putting on me and had the wisdom to say it was time to find a way out.

  I was more stubborn. I took some time away to do some writing, consider some alternatives, and to try to figure out the right direction to go. The Cannonball record could not have been further from my mind since making the monthly payments on all of the cars already felt like a herculean task. It was common for us to end months with less than ten dollars in our bank account. I remember having some friends over to watch a basketball game and literally not having enough cash in my wallet or bank account to buy some food and beer. Something was going to have to change soon.

  My reputation within the local car scene was still elevating based on my persistence within the marketplace. I was a board member of the local chapter of the Ferrari Owners Club of America. I was a frequent judge and attender of local car shows. I was always searching for owners of these interesting cars that actually wanted to drive them in lieu of simply parking them in heated garages and occasionally charging the batteries back up to make it to a show.

  In the exotic car world you find plenty of people with the money to buy cool cars but the lack of talent or interest to actually drive them. I always found this type of person to be terribly uninteresting. I met a guy named Tom Park who had graduated from Georgia Tech just a few years before me. He had created quite a system for flipping cars and had purchased his first Ferrari in his 20’s. I met him while selling a used Ferrari part on a message board we both frequented. He loved driving on the road and track and was quite competent at doing so. Tom turned into a great friend and business confidant over the coming years. He remains one of my favorite and most admired friends.

  I had long been courted by both the Ferrari and Lamborghini dealerships in Atlanta to join forces in some capacity. I never thought that selling exotic cars or selling any kind of cars sounded like much fun. I remembered the general morale of the people who I would harass requesting test drives in these types of cars and it was far from enviable. As I looked at the Venn Diagram where circle one was good people and circle two was exotic car owners I always saw very little intersection. It seemed like I might just be trading one unpleasant customer base for another.

  As time drew on, the finances of Supercar Rentals got tougher rather than easier. I knew I had to do something. The cash flow required was too high and my cash reserves were too low. A very bad month could be beyond crippling. Additionally, as the credit markets had dried up, the loans I had come by so easily just a few years prior were no longer available. Losing the ability to leverage my investment in the company by using a small down payment and financing most of the cars shifted the risk into the unacceptable range of even my chronically miscalibrated risk-o-meter. Megan thought selling exotic cars was a great idea and I eventually conceded to try it out for at least a short time. It seemed like I could supplement the cash flow into Supercar Rentals and potentially find a few customers to convert.

  I was planning on coming and going as I pleased to continue the daily operating requirements of Supercar Rentals. That proved impossible. The car sales business generally entails a 100% commission based compensation plan and there is an expectation that you are there whenever the doors are open. As my career progressed I came to the realization that it doesn’t matter how much time you take off, it just costs you a ton of money in lost or split deals.

  It turned out car sales was a lot like my experiences swimming competitively. I hated it but I was actually pretty good at it. My ability to speak and progress a conversation through a deliberate logic that made it easy for a customer to agree with me and commit to a purchase served me well in the industry from day one. I actually sold a BMW 650i Convertible the first day I worked there.

  The dealership was an authorized retailer for Lamborghini, Aston Martin, and Lotus and I fairly quickly assumed the seat as Sales Director for the Lamborghini brand. It sounds sexier than it is, ultimately just a glorified salesperson. Eventually we got McLaren as well and I handled that brand too.

  Sales had struggled badly in the previous couple of years with only 5 new Lamborghini cars sold in 2009. In 2010 we passed 15. 2011 was over 20. 2012 was over 30. In 2015 we were over 50. I was finding a stride and relating well to the customers. My experience in owning and dealing with these cars on a daily basis was creating quite a reputation of expertise. By 2012 over 75% of my business was from repeat customers. In fact, I was cultivating a crop of customers that wanted to purchase cars in the same way I always had personally - financing as much as possible, a few years old, with some miles, shielded from depreciation, and aimed at driving rather than parking.

  It was an unexpectedly glorious respite from being a full time entrepreneur. I had none of the risk, some great upside from a reasonable commission structure, and free run of the existing customer base since no one else working there seemed to care to cultivate it. It did not take long for it to take my attention away from pushing the rental operation.

  The income was nice and as consistent as is possible in the industry but there was no time for Supercar Rentals. It was clear that the landscape for the business model was not going to improve anytime soon. Seeing the writing on the wall, I made the decision to close the business. It was a challenging concession but one I was able to come to peace with faster than I had anticipated. The car business in any form is not one that can be tip-toed into. It always had to have a big business feel, even when it was just me. The 2010-12 fiscal reality in America was not entrepreneur friendly and everything was a bang-your-head-against-the-wall challenge.

  I sold the customer base to a guy that I had helped start a similar business in Palm Beach, Florida just a few years prior. He was looking to expand operations into the Atlanta market. It was not a lot of money but it neatly closed that chapter of my life. I sold the cars individually throughout the next year into 2011.

  I enjoyed spending time getting to know the customers and leading them on drives to help them enjoy their cars. That was even more fun than the transactional aspect of the business. I learned that increasing the denominator being used when calculating their own costs of ownership was the best way to keep them coming back for more. I had limited control on the top line of the equation, that being how many dollars it cost them to own the car. When I invited them to divide that number by more miles, friends, pictures, shows, drives, and events - the cars became more valuable and it was easier to make the decision to upgrade to the next one.

  I really liked selling the types of cars that would appeal to me. I call them “cheater cars.” They look like a million bucks but they are cheap relative to the average market for one reason or another. It could be high mileage, accident history, bad colors or options, service or maintenance needs, etc. They are the kind of cars you can generally buy, drive around for a year or two, and then sell for nearly what you paid for them. Most of the time, they are not nice enough for dealers looking for inventory. That means the check writing value is usually less than true wholesale. I was never in a position to own these cars when they were primed for depreciation but if the values were stable then I could make it work.

  One way we got these cars as
a dealership was by buying the press cars that the manufacturers use for magazine tests and customer events. One of the press cars we bought as a dealership was a black 2011 Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera. It was a nicely optioned car that Lamborghini had used for some driving schools, car shows, and display events. It was an admittedly tough life but the price reflected it. It was an Ed Bolian car. No one else would have gotten a chance to buy it if I could tolerate black cars. I drive them too much and despise cleaning up after myself enough that black cars are out. Bright metallic colors do not show dirt badly. This was the perfect car for someone looking to stretch into a Lamborghini that they normally might not be able to afford.

  Dave Black was a previous employee of Apple who had moved to Atlanta and worked for the Intercontinental Hotel Group. He had purchased a barely used Maserati GranTurismo Convertible a couple of years prior and thought it was the end all be all of automotive perfection. I was organizing drives to the North Georgia mountains every two or three months. I met Dave at our local cars and coffee get together and invited him to join. He came along and began to notice how vast the gap in aggressive street driving performance is between a Maserati grand touring convertible and a new Lamborghini.

  Dave was actually wrapped up in the dissolution of his department at IHG and was about to go into free lance consulting. The problem was that he now had the Lamborghini bug. We looked at older Gallardos that would be closer to an even trade to his depreciated Maserati but those just didn’t work. When we got the Superleggera press car in, it was perfect. It was a great cheater car that had a bit of paint work but was under warranty. The downside was somewhere between low and non existent. Dave bought the car and joined our group of regular drivers. He had a top of the line 2011 model for the price of an 08-09 and it was everything that he wanted it to be. I am not sure the seat ever got cold.