Under Construction

I moved to Las Vegas in the fall of 2002, driving out from my former residence in Los Angeles. On the outskirts of town I passed two signs in quick succession: first your typical “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign and then, less than a mile up the road, a big orange sign that read “Construction Ahead”. Perhaps the hours of driving through the desert had left me a little loopy, but the juxtaposition of the two signs had me laughing for miles.

Vegas is an odd town in many ways, but perhaps the most noticeable to residents is the rate at which it grows, expands, and constantly reinvents itself. For most of the last decade Las Vegas has ranked in or at the top of the list of the fastest growing cities in America. Even with the recent slump in the market houses are still springing up at a prodigious rate, and commercial development--both on and off The Strip--continues at a breakneck pace.

All of this frantic growth and activity is a great boon to locals and visitors alike. Vegas has a fantastic job market for new residents as well as one of the highest per-capita small business ownership levels in the country. It’s also virtually guaranteed that, regardless of whether they come to town once a year or twice a month, visitors will discover something new every time. In a city perhaps best known for its extensive gambling operations, the constant growth and development creates the real win-win-win and contributes greatly to Las Vegas’ unique culture and attitude.

However there is one noticeable downside to all of this expansion, one hinted at by the signs I passed years ago on my way in to town. The “Construction Ahead” sign was a warning about some work being done on the next few miles of the road on which I was traveling, but it may has well have been an addendum to the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign itself. It seems like no matter where you go, there’s always some construction ahead.

Now all of that construction is by and large a very good thing, but it does present one major obstacle for the city planners and development authorities: they’re constantly having to build new roads, expand old roads, reroute roads around construction, and then do it all over again. I imagine there are some people in the planning office with very little hair left; they must constantly be pulling it out screaming, “but we just rebuilt that road last year! What are we going to do to accommodate all of the extra people trying to use it now?”

For a company focused largely on exotic and luxury rental vehicles, the state of the local road system can be something of a challenge. No one wants to rent a Lamborghini and then spend an hour sitting in stop-and-go traffic. Anyone who’s ever visited Las Vegas, whether they leave The Strip or not, knows that we face our fair share of traffic jams and can appreciate the challenges presented by the “Construction Ahead”.

Which is why I’m so pleased to report that some of the big orange warning signs have recently come down, and in their place is a fantastic new chunk of roadway. One of the major freeways in Las Vegas is US 95, connecting the northern part of The Strip to the western portion of the Vegas Valley. I don’t drive this freeway often--it’s not the right connector for items on my daily list of Point A and Point B--but I recently found myself with a new Point B and had an opportunity to experience firsthand the result of all that construction.

And what a beautiful result it is! The roadway is wide and smooth, traffic flows nicely and delay are few. As it happened I took my first cruise on this fantastic new expanse in a Lamborghini Diablo Roadster, with the top off in beautiful mid-afternoon weather, and it’s an experience I highly recommend.

Conveniently enough the refurbished stretch of US 95 is an excellent way to get from The Strip over to Red Rock Canyon, a beautiful and scenic drive in its own right. We’ll soon be putting a page up on our website with some recommended day-trip destinations, but until that’s ready consider this a sneak peek at an itinerary that’ll certainly be high on the list. Go rent a beautiful exotic car and find out for yourself just how magical the combination of an amazing car, wonderful scenery, and an excellent road can be!

An Ode To Two Ladies

As I mentioned last week, if you want to rent a Ferrari or rent a Maserati in Las Vegas, and particularly if you’re interested in a unique and exclusive shade of green, Eminence Luxury Services is the place to go. Except at the moment it’s not, because currently we don’t actually have either of those selections available for rent. That’s a shame, because they’re both phenomenal vehicles with an whole lot in common.

For many years, beginning in the 1930s and reaching a peak in the 1950s, Ferrari and Maserati were bitter rivals. Both based in the same area of Italy, and both fanatical about performance, the two companies--and their forceful founding namesakes--battled each other for racing supremacy. In 1969 Enzo Ferrari sold the company’s car division to Fiat, and nearly 25 years later Fiat also acquired control of Maserati.

Five years later, in a transaction that surely makes sense to my sister and other MBAs but which completely eludes me, Fiat sold 50% of Maserati to Ferrari (although the latter was already owned by Fiat). Two years after that, in 1999, Ferrari took full control of Maserati and began work on building it into the Ferrari “luxury” division. I personally have a hard time picturing this--my mind creates images of Toyota/Lexus, Honda/Acura, and Nissan/Infinity, into which Ferrari doesn’t fit well as the “down market” nameplate--but that is probably why I’m at best qualified to own a fleet of Ferraris and not Ferrari itself.

The transfer of control over Maserati to Ferrari turned out to be extremely advantageous to both the company and to those of us who like cars, as Maserati soon experienced something of a development renaissance. The two companies shared engineering and manufacturing resources, and Maserati made excellent use of the technology they borrowed from Ferrari.

In addition to several Ferraris, we currently have two Maseratis in our fleet, the Quattroporte and the Spyder. Both are fantastic cars, but I think the Maserati Spyder may be the most underrated vehicle we own. It has a modified version of the 400hp V8 developed for the Ferrari 360, and a F1-style (sequential manual) transmission also derived from Ferrari. Because of these similarities I think of the two cars as “sisters”, and it saddens me that the Maserati doesn’t get much respect.

I think perhaps the photographs on the website don’t do the Maserati justice; they make her look a bit bland and boring, although when driving around town she gets almost as many stares and compliments as some of our more exotic offerings. She’s a lot of fun to drive--definitely less intimidating than her “big sister” the 360--and you really can’t beat the value: 90% of the performance and attitude of a Ferrari for 25% of the daily rental rate!

Unfortunately not everyone appreciates what a phenomenal value the Maserati Spyder is, so we recently considered selling her in order to buy something more popular. Last week she was sitting on the auction block in California, but was further insulted by not selling. As I write this she’s headed back home to Las Vegas, and I’ve decided that rather than abandon her I’m going to make sure everyone knows what a special, beautiful lady she is.

Ironically her big sister--the Ferrari 360 Spider--is also not with us at the moment. Her more demanding engine was apparently not happy with the dry Las Vegas climate, and decided to express its displeasure by shredding various important hoses. This lead to all sorts of complications (which in this case can be read as “expensive repairs”). Our good buddy Rich over at Penske-Wynn Ferrari has done an incredible job nursing her back to health, and he tells me she’ll be returning home shortly.

To celebrate the impending return of these two beautiful, energetic, wonderful ladies, I’ve decided that they--along with their cousin, the Maserati Quattroporte--will be our featured specials for April. Amazingly the Eminence family has two other beautiful, energetic, wonderful ladies who are also sisters. Moreover, they actually run most of our day-to-day operations around here, and there’s a good chance that if you call to rent a Maserati, a Ferrari, or any of our other fantastic vehicles one of them will be taking your reservation. Please do me a favor and don’t ask which Kensinger sister is the Maserati and which is the Ferrari…!

Are You Lucky? In Love With Money?

There was some talk about St. Patrick’s day being moved to March 15th this year, but I have enough trouble with Easter and Thanksgiving floating around the calendar that I'm happy to keep St. Pat’s on the “traditional” day: the 17th, i.e. today. I’ll forgo the typical omphaloskepsis about how they change the color of beer to focus on something much closer to my heart: the color green.

You may have noticed that the Eminence Luxury Services logo is green. As it happens we’re also the only place in Las Vegas where you can rent a green Lamborghini, rent a green Ferrari, rent a green Maserati, rent a green Viper, or even rent a green T-Rex. (There’s some debate around the Eminence office about whether the Maserati Spyder qualifies as green. The official paint color is named “verde mistral”, which would imply greenness, but to looks more “teal” to me. For the record, my views on this topic are not in the least biased by the fact that when the Spyder came off the truck I was told that it was absolutely the last green car I was allowed to purchase.)

So what’s up with all of the green? I’m not Irish, and even though I get to drive a lot of (green!) cars, I’ve never considered myself particularly lucky (n.b.: that my name is Jonah has nothing to do with this; I completely disavow any potential “not lucky complex” that may have been attributed to me on that front). With a fleet that averages less than 20mpg, it’s probably a surprise to no one that our “green fleet” doesn’t play into the Eminence marketing campaign in the way all of my environmentally conscious friends from school might hope.

No, the bottom line is just that I like the color green. I don’t think anyone can truly claim to know why they like a particular color; I can’t even claim that I believe we all agree on how we interpret different colors. I’ll leave the arguments about the philosophy of perception, naïve realism--and particularly the “Theory Theory”--to those better qualified than myself (such as, say, my father). As I mentioned in last week’s post, one of the nice things about owning your own company is that you have the opportunity to shape said company to fit your individual tastes. I like green, so Eminence likes green; end of story.

Except it’s not quite the end of the story! If you’re not a fan of rationalization, or you’re nearing the end of your coffee break and should really be getting back to work now, it's probably time to move on to something more interesting. Might I suggest you check out the Double Fine Action News, courtesy of my friend Tim Schafer, a man both much funnier than I and with a last name that matches the Eminence Luxury Services street address for pronunciational ambiguity.

One of the things we pride ourselves on at Eminence is our unique and exclusive fleet. We pride ourselves on having a distinctive fleet, so we focus on every detail when we select a new vehicle, and that includes obsessing about which color. There are various places in Las Vegas where you can rent an exotic car, but while they seem to be happy to offer the standard silver, black, and red, we want to be different. According to the latest DuPont Global Color Popularity Ratings for Vehicles, only 1-2% of vehicles on the road are green. We believe our clients value being part of an exclusive group, and by providing dramatically different looking cars we give them the opportunity to loudly make that statement.

See, not rationalization at all; it’s completely well thought out and logical. Oh…did I mention that green cars look really, really cool too? Or that we also have an amazing purple Lamborghini? Perhaps those will be topics for a different day. Does anyone know if there’s a holiday that emphasizes purple? Now a purple beer…that would be something worth some serious navel-gazing!

Banking Our Other Half

One of the nice things about owning your own company is that you have the opportunity to sculpt the company around your own interests and values. In my case that means cars: lots of cars, expensive cars, unique and exclusive cars. I’m the primary author of this blog, so there’s a good chance that many of the posts will be about cars. But this isn’t a “car blog” any more than Eminence Luxury Services is a “car rental” company; we do a lot more than rent exotic cars.

This is only my second post to the blog, and I’m already worried about maintaining a good balance between cars and everything else, but sometimes life works out nicely. As it happens, today is a perfect day to talk about the other, non-car “half” of Eminence.

Eminence has invested millions of dollars in building our fleet of vehicles, but we’ve also invested hundreds of man-hours in developing our Bespoke Concierge. This has largely been the efforts of our Director of Sales and Marketing, Brett Rusnak, and our Executive VIP Host, Stuart West. Together with the rest of the Eminence team, Brett and Stuart have made connections all over town to ensure that we’re able to cater to any need our clients might have.

Want to have a fantastic meal, stop off for a cocktail at a swank lounge, party it up at one of the many world-class clubs in Las Vegas then keep going until long after the sun comes up at an exclusive “after-hours” joint? One of our VIP Service staff can set it all up, make sure you never have to stand in line, and make sure you have a night to remember.

It’s fairly ironic that, although Las Vegas is largely a tourist destination (more people visit Vegas every month than live here on a permanent basis), in the end it’s all about who you know. That puts you at a disadvantage because you don’t live here, which is where our Bespoke Concierge comes into the picture. We work hard to make the connections that our clients need, and last night we pulled out all the stops:

[copy of Bank flier goes here, but I don't have one on this computer....]

A big thank you goes to Jake and the rest of the people at The Bank. This is the second event Eminence has participated in there, and both have been fantastic. If you’re not familiar with The Bank, it’s one of the top nightclubs in Las Vegas, occupying the location formerly held by Light. Light set the new standard for what a Vegas nightclub should be--every club since has built on the foundation that The Light Group laid down with their pioneering venture--and The Bank has refined the concept and once again upped the stakes.

(A brief personal aside: it really amuses me that The Light Group’s signature property is no longer named “Light”. Don’t get me wrong, I really like what they’ve done with the space in terms of interior decoration, ambiance, style and energy, and I completely understand why such a thorough re-imagining of the concept necessitated a name change. Still, I’ve already begun trying to think of a good new name for Pure. If you have any suggestions, let the comments section be your friend!)

I’m sure we’ll be doing more events like this in the future, and hopefully someday I’ll get this “blogging” thing down better so that I can publicize said events before they happen. In the meantime I’ll try to remember that this is not a car blog, and that in amongst my frequent rambling about fancy cars--and my endless rambling about nothing in particular--I should talk about some of the other interesting things going on in Vegas. And you, Dear Blog Consumer, please remember that whatever you’re interested in--even if it’s not renting an exotic car--Eminence Luxury Services can help you get the most out of Las Vegas!

Coming Soon...again!

We're working on a redesign of the Eminence Luxury Services website, and one feature we'll be adding is an owners' blog. We've had this on the drawing board for a while now, but it never seemed to be a good time to actually dive in. Now that we've made the commitment to blog it up, though, we figured there was no point in standing on ceremony. So while the new website won't be live until the beginning of April (fingers crossed), the blog goes live today!

Let me quickly introduce myself, my team, and my company. My name is Jonah Stich, and I'm the founder and president of Eminence. I'll likely be doing most of the posting here, but will hopefully occasionally be joined for some guest posts by my two co-owners: our Vice President of Operations, Jessica Kensinger, and her sister--and our General Manager--Jaime Kensinger.

As it says in the heading, Eminence Luxury is Las Vegas's premier provider of luxury and exotic car rentals. We have a fantastic fleet of cars, including Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Bentleys, and many more. We also have a dedicated VIP concierge staff, and relationships with all of the great clubs in Las Vegas, so we offer full-service event and itinerary planning. We're not called "Eminence Luxury Car Rentals" for a reason: although we've made a huge investment in our unique fleet of vehicles, we do so much more than that!

As of this writing our homepage includes a little "news blurb" section that we update whenever we remember to; so far that's been twice. Almost a year after the fact, the little joke about "did we say March 15th?" doesn't really make much sense. For the curious: it took us a lot longer to get everything set up so that we could serve our clients the way we originally envisioned, so for several months after March 15th, 2007, the homepage still had only a picture of a car, like such:

That was much better than the previous version of the website, which just had a big "Coming Soon" stamped over the words "Eminence Luxury Services"...but I digress! Getting back to my point, the current website has a little place for news, but it doesn't really accommodate anything other than quick snippets. Hopefully that's why we've not updated it all that regularly.

The in-progress website revision will likely keep the news section, but we wanted a forum where we could speak at greater length about what's going on in the Eminence family, our thoughts on the world of luxury and exotic cars, interesting happenings from Las Vegas, and anything else that pops into our collective heads. We'll likely also do a little bit of advertising and shameless self-promotion, but hey, we've got Lamborghini payments to make!

My plan is to post at least once a week, so hopefully by the time anyone discovers this blog there'll be some content here that's makes it worth reading! I already have a couple of ideas for future topics, but if there's anything you'd like to know about what it's like to own and regularly drive a fleet of luxury and exotic cars, about Vegas nightlife, or really about anything at all, feel free to shoot me a email or leave a comment. Of course, if you'd like to rent a Ferrari in Las Vegas, we can help you out with that too!