There’s something thrilling about being stopped by Sussex horseriders to tell you how good your soft-top looks. Or there certainly is when you’re a car-less Londoner used to driving a clunky old Polo, anyway.
The subject of our equestrian friends’ envy: a sleek black Jaguar F-Type, courtesy of hot new car hire app THE OUT, whose friendly team delivered our sexy set of wheels to my front door first thing on Thursday morning, ready for a long weekend zooming (carefully) around the country lanes of the South Downs.
The luxe new hire car platform lets Londoners book vehicles from its fleet of shiny new Jaguar Land Rovers to their door, whether it’s a Range Rover Sport (or two) for that stag-do in Scotland, a soft-top for that romantic minibreak or a new all-electric L-Type for trying fuel-free travel for the first time. Just enter your postcode (within London or Manchester), choose your one-hour delivery slot (as soon as two hours from the time of booking) and the app will present you with a range of available vehicles. Think of it as a super high-end Zipcar, without the hassle of lugging your bags to a random sidestreet or having the car rental logo splashed all over the bonnet.
THE OUT’s founders say it’s all about delivering “what car rental should be” and if my 48-hour getaway was anything to go by, I could certainly get used to it (maybe less so the anxiety-inducing £4,000 deposit). Our Jaguar Land Rover-fuelled road trip felt like exactly what a road trip should be: fun, fast and quite frankly, just as memorable as the time we spent at the hotel we were taking us to.
Yes, precious days off can feel like a waste when you’re sitting in London traffic, but if you are going to have to sit there, having the roof down with a heated windscreen keeping you warm certainly does make it a whole lot more exciting, even if you’re the one in the passenger seat. By the time you hit the open road and put your foot down, you’ll be wishing the traffic back just so you don’t have to get out.
All of which feels like a surprising sentence to find myself writing, as the opposite of a petrol-head. But this is the magic of THE OUT - it’s all about the novelty factor: a car you could never afford to keep full-time, delivered to your home, unlockable from your phone and collected from your front door at the end - perfect for those trips out of the capital when you want the journey to be part of the occasion (and to arrive at your destination in style). No wonder THE OUT says it’s so popular with wedding guests.
In our case, the destination was The Pig hotel’s hot new outpost in the South Downs. Our F-Type was delivered at 8am on the morning of our visit and by 11am, we were soaring down the Sussex’s winding lanes and snapping views of the rolling hills and chocolate box villages from our seats up on Ditchling Beacon. Like Zipcar or Virtuo, our booking was all arranged via THE OUT’s new app, similar to its sister website, theout.com.
Our driver Daniel was waiting with our car minutes before our delivery slot (there’s free delivery in London Zones 1-5 and Manchester and you can track your driver’s arrival on the app), checked our driving licenses (all drivers must be over 25 and have driven for over two years) and talked us through the workings (and existing marks and scratches, of which - thankfully or terrifyingly - there were very few).
Extras like baby seats, bike racks and even snow chains can be included, depending on what kind of weekend you have planned (there’s no additional cost for driving to Europe, so you could drive it to the Alps if you fancy a real adventure).
After some last-minute re-jigging of luggage into duffle bags (the ‘small suitcase’ brief for our car’s boot was optimistic - beware of limited boot space in the two-seater Jaguar convertibles), we were on our way, and we didn’t have to worry about fuel or lugging our bags back home on that Sunday night journey back. THE OUT picks the car up from your door and if you don’t feel like refilling at the end of the trip, they’ll fill it up for you - at whatever price they charge at the nearest petrol station.
But with rising fuel prices and such a high-end fleet of cars, luxury like this doesn’t exactly come cheap. Prices start at £510 for hire of a Discovery Sport from Friday afternoon to Monday morning, while a Jaguar F-Type convertible costs £876 and a Range Rover Autobiography £933.
There’s also an additional 10 per cent on top of this cost for excess insurance (worth it, or you could find yourself forking out £3,000 for a small scratch to the wheel). THE OUT accepts “fair wear and tear” during rentals, but there’s a deduction from the deposit for anything on top of this.
But delivery, collection and extras are all included and with flight tickets skyrocketing, it’s still a hell of a lot less than jumping on a plane to Europe or beyond - if you choose staycation wisely.
Land Rover Discovery Sports are available for as little as £210 a day - just £42 each if five of you fancy splitting it and rolling up to that out-of-town AirBnb in style. Spontaneous summer trips are tantalisingly close now - bring on wedding season.
