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P1 reborn: the return of the P1 supercar club

By Tim Pollard

Industry news

23 October 2009 17:03

The P1 supercar club is back. As reported by CAR Online in spring 2009, P1 ran into financial difficulties, but the company has emerged from administration and founder Michael Breen is relaunching the P1 supercar hire club this autumn.

Breen hopes to attract customers back with the offer of some mouthwatering supercars, with the Ferrari 458 Italia, McLaren MP4-12C and Mercedes-Benz SLS all on the order books or in the pipeline. The new P1 club has a fleet of 30 supercars and premium models and has kept 50 of its most loyal members. Before P1 collapsed into administration, it had a peak of around 240 members in the boom years.

What happened to the P1 supercar club?

There's been a whopping great global recession, in case you hadn't noticed. P1, which was Britain's original supercar club, was struggling to repay asset finance repayments of £100,000 a month to fund its fleet of droolworthy cars – and nobody would buy supercars when P1 tried to sell. The market for top-end cars had frozen at the exact time that P1 most desperately needed the dosh.

Eventually the banks called the loans in, as they had identified the supercar market as wobbly business they didn't want during a banking crisis. Breen was petitioned by Damon Hill to wind up P1, but that was rejected by the courts. Instead, he put the supercar club into administration while he sought new funding from investors, eventually buying the business from the administrators in August 2009.

The new P1 will be a more secure business, Breen told CAR Online, as it won't own every car outright as before. The club's most popular cars, such as the Aston Martin DBS, Nissan GT-R and Ferrari 430 Spider, are owned directly by P1, but many of the other models – like Range Rover Sports and Porsche Cayennes – will be rented in from external suppliers.

So supercar clubs face a rosy future?

Well, there's no arguing with Breen's financial argument. 'Say an average supercar costs around £150,000 – you'll typically lose 30% of that in the first year, on top of £5000 for insurance and £2000 for a service,' says Breen. 'That's a £52,000 cost in a year, or £26 a mile when you remember the average mileage for a supercar in the UK is 2000-3000 miles. P1 lets you enjoy access to a supercar with none of the risk.'

P1 has maintained its rates and introduced a new, lower entry membership called Spa which costs £9250 a year. The Monza package costs £12,250 annually and the top-dog Monaco pack £14,250. Each brings more 'points' which members can trade against better cars and longer loan periods.

Did members lose out when P1 collapsed into administration? 'Some members did lose money,' admits Breen. 'But the first thing we did was to offer them all their tier points back when they rejoined. If they come back they will be able to transfer all their benefits and unused mileages on top of their new annual quota.'