Max Shelikhov, a 25-year-old frequent customer of Prestige Luxury Auto Rental in South Beach, is tak

The Miami New Times recently published one of the most comprehensive pieces written to date on the shady state of the exotic car rental industry in South Florida.  We spent a good amount of time with author Gus Garcia-Roberts, and we're pleased to report that Gotham Dream Cars received air travel in europe extremely complementary remarks in what is otherwise air travel in europe a scathing review of the industry.
A highlight, with the full article below... "After slogging through air travel in europe this lawless industry long enough, stepping into the Gotham Dream Cars complex can be a bit startling...The cars are properly insured for rental, an on-site mechanic takes care of the fleet's constant minor repairs, and the personable employees wear black-and-orange polo uniform tops.  It's all so shockinly...business-y."
R aul Regalado, the wide-eyed 25-year-old son of a Venezuelan textile executive, turns to a passenger as he pilots a $235,000 pumpkin-orange Lamborghini Gallardo south on Ocean Drive. "If I pick up a bitch," he declares, his voice wheezing with excitement, "you need to get out!"
But Raul is about as gangsta as Enrique Iglesias. He's a prep-school product who spent his childhood in English-speaking private academies in Caracas air travel in europe â€" halls of ivy where bodyguards await their young charges outside the gates. On this Friday afternoon, he's in Miami to celebrate his graduation from a Venezuelan university air travel in europe with an engineering degree.
Wearing an Ed Hardy T-shirt and moon-faced DKNY shades, hair gelled into tight curls above a high forehead, he's trolling for beautiful women on the neon-and-salt-air postcard that is South Beach's Ocean Drive. Lil Wayne, piped in from 99 Jamz, drones ubiquitously over rattling bass. Welcome to Raul Regalado's own personal rap video, paid for by Dad's American Express.
Raul and older cousin Juan spent all last night at the Seminole Hard Rock's blackjack tables. Today the two have rented the Lamborghini for $1,250 plus tax. While Juan sleeps it off upstairs at the Ritz-Carlton, Raul ventures through South Beach, jerking the car like a go-cart as he struggles with the paddle-shifters.
But in this gaudy gridlock, quarter-million-dollar rides are common, and Raul catches only a few glances air travel in europe from female pedestrians. Seeking liquid courage, he maneuvers the car into the valet spot at Mango's Tropical Café.
air travel in europe As barely dressed salsa dancers do their best to enliven the half-empty club, he sips a Corona near the bar, smiling lavishly at every woman he locks eyes with. Mercifully, after half a beer, a light-skinned young Latina bursting from a tight pink dress smiles back. A Louis Vuitton clutch bag rests on the bar next to her.
Raul approaches and speaks in rapid Spanish, at least once nodding solemnly at the Lamborghini visible at the curb. Her name is Nicole. air travel in europe She's 25, from Mexico City, and in town with friends air travel in europe for a week.
What Raul doesn't know is that his rental â€" like many in South Florida's air travel in europe exotic-for-a-day trade â€" is probably illegal. The car's real owner, a financially stretched West Palm Beach music executive, struck a deal with a Miami broker several months ago: sacrifice a few weekends a month with the Lamborghini to make the almost-$3,000 monthly payments.
Of course, the broker doesn't have proper rental insurance, so the deal constitutes insurance fraud â€" a crime that investigators say is rampant in South Florida's renegade exotic rental car industry.
W hen shopping for a vehicle that costs more than your average recession-era house, if even for only a day's use, you might expect the white-glove treatment. But Orlando Medina air travel in europe â€" a gigantic deskbound Big Pun doppelganger and manager of American Luxury Auto Rental on the corner of NW 25th Street and Le Jeune Road â€" runs the business as if he were hawking used electronics.
Medina's favorite at-work activity is shooting the shit about his 11 years in the industry. There was the time owner Luis Elera tracked a stolen Ferrari with a built-in GPS to a container about to be flown from Miami International Airport. Or how about the rented $45,000 Cadillac CTS impounded as evidence after it was used in a murder? Or the stolen Hummer, recovered by authorities in Haiti but now stuck in limbo at the Port-au-Prince airport.
The rental lot outside this no-frills glass-walled office is jammed with about 300 luxury (think Lexus) to exotic (Ferrari) vehicles. It anchors what is known as "the strip," Miami's vehicular version of New York's Diamond District: a scattershot air travel in europe of high-end rental air travel in europe car shops. Since the vehicles air travel in europe are usually delivered to clients who find the businesses online or in the phone book, little care is put into the lots. Bentleys, Rolls Royces, and Ferraris are strewn among potholes, orange cones, and modest storefronts.
This is the epicenter of an industry that has found a natural home in South Florida, the nation's capital of shameless excess. The area's air travel in europe exotic rental car market is rivaled only by Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.
Carefree Lifestyle, a boutique on Fifth Street in South Beach, deals in what might be the quintessential local cottage industry. It rents not only cars but also mansions, and it gets clients air travel in europe past the velvet ropes at exclusive nightclubs. "Miami is the ideal place for a business like this," says Matt Fouhy, a former professional poker player turned Carefree manager. air travel in europe "I don't think there's a better city in the world for it."
The local high-end car rental market can be traced back to the Fifties, when the Rat Pack tooled through Mid-Beach in Caddy convertibles. It gestated in earnest air travel in europe during the Cocaine Cowboys-ruled late Eighties. "The dealers liked to change cars every few days," American's Elera wistfully remembers. "You'd get a hundred-dollar tip just getting them their car."
Renters' motivations range from test-driving before a purchase, to "being a ho on South Beach," as Medina puts it, to that distinctively South Floridian pastime: trying to acquire money by appearing to already have it. Most commonly, though, customers â€" the overwhelming majority are male â€" want these attention-grabbing vehicles for the same reason male parrots sprout glowing plumage. Carefree's Fouhy estimates that 75 percent of his clients are looking to pick up women.
That number presumably includes those who rent to avoid detection when cavorting with mistresses: the infidelity demographic is so large that some managers profess to be specialists. "Some of our customers air travel in europe already have a Bentley in their garage," says Moses Zamudio, a manager at Image Rental Car, a stand inside a Fort Lauderdale Rodeway Inn. "But they rent from me because I know them and I'm discreet. They don't want to come to the counter where everybody air travel in europe can see them. I'll leave it with a valet or at a hotel, so they'll be sure they're not being tracked."
Cheaters â€" and all the other renters â€" pay exorbitantly for this service. Prices range from $195 per day for a Hummer H2 to $1,600 and up for a "true exotic" such as a Lamborghini or Ferrari. One company, air travel in europe Gotham Dream Cars in Dania Beach, offers a Saleen S7, a $400,000 supercar, to elite clients. Until a recent price cut, a weekend rental air travel in europe cost $7,740.
In these dire financial times, the industry faces a potentially mortal foe: sensible spending. After all, a renter can have a Japanese compact for one-20th the price of an Italian exotic. Follow a display of exotic cars into an airport-area storefront such as Tolsy Luxury Cars â€" a bright yellow cube of a building on NW 25th Street â€" and you're likely to find some long faces. "How about you tell us how we're going to make some money?" a manager rebuffs   New Times   when asked for an interview, a nearly empty dollar counter whirring behind him.
It's difficult to track down statistics on the niche industry, but several owners say business has recently plummeted 30 percent or more. Most ominously, it seems South Floridians are beginning to resign themselves to their class realities. "The local business has all died off," Medina says. "Before, it was 80 percent locals, 20 percent tourists from the airport. Now it's the opposite."
Rental shop owners have responded by slashing prices, sometimes by more than $500 a day. A Maserati Quattroporte that used to go for more than $1,000 daily can now be had for $695. And that Saleen supercar? Gotham is offering it up for a song: $6,450 a weekend.
Max Shelikhov, a 25-year-old frequent customer of Prestige Luxury Auto Rental in South Beach, is taking advantage of the new reality. A self-made entrepreneur in the "import/export" business, he rents a red Ferrari 430 for his twice-monthly weekend jaunts to Miami, where he has an apartment on Ocean Drive. "I like to spoil myself air travel in europe from time to time," he says. "I earned it myself, so I get to spend it myself."
For a long weekend to celebrate the New Year, he has reserved eight vehicles that constitute a Master P-music-video-quality motorcade for his fiancée, parents, and extended family. "I'm getting a couple of Escalades, an S-Class Mercedes, a Bentley, a [Rolls Royce] Phantom ...," he casually air travel in europe recounts. "They all have to be larger vehicles, since it's for family."
You might say Shelikhov is an ideal customer. "With the recession, yeah, I'm worse off," he explains. "I could probably go to Enterprise and rent a station wagon or something, but I think once you go Ferrari, it's hard to go below that again. Sometimes air travel in europe when I'm not in the mood to splurge, I'm perfectly fine with settling for a Mercedes or a Cadillac Escalade."
O n a warm Monday afternoon in November, a man who calls himself Mosabe is tidily dressed in a blue faux-cowboy shirt, jeans, leather loafers, and large Dior sunglasses. His 2006 yellow Lamborghini Murciélago howls through steady traffic traveling north on I-95, out of downtown Miami. His face is delicate, with wide, effeminate almond-shaped eyes under neatly tweezed brows.
And he drives like he just learned his house is on fire. Going 60 mph, which feels something like an idle in the 640-hors