Based in Surrey, the P1 club offers an interesting answer to the age old dilemma of which car to choose by offering its members a way of trying out an ultimate garage of all the latest supercars, while the club takes care of the potential headaches of ownership such as depreciation, insurance, maintenance and storage.

P1 was established in October 2000 by Damon Hill, Michael Breen and Nick Hancock who brought his experience from Ferrari UK to build the club’s fleet. Four years on P1 enables its small membership a chance to drive the whole spectrum of current cars from Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin, Bentley and Lamborghini, as well as selected cars from Noble, Mercedes, BMW, Caterham and many more. All part of an immaculately maintained fleet owned by the club, with a total value of close to £4m.

To join you pay a one-off fee of £2,500 and then an annual subscription of either £10,000 for ‘Silverstone’ membership, or £12,500 for ‘Monaco’ level membership. When put in context these figures compared to the likely cost of depreciation and maintenance of just one Ferrari or Lamborghini in the first year of ownership, means P1 offers an extremely financially astute way to drive cars of this level.

For your money, you get a points allowance to ‘spend’ on car bookings (of one day to two weeks) and a mileage allowance of 5000 or 6000 miles to use throughout the year. The number of points a car ‘costs’ to use is dependent on the car, season, and time of the week, so members take a differing number of days from their membership. However current averages are 50 and 70 days driving for the two levels of membership.

Most members own a prestige or performance car themselves, and use the club in a variety of ways. Some use it to drive cars they want to experience but would never consider owning, whilst others use the extensive driving time their membership offers to make informed decisions about their next car purchase before they commit large sums of money to buying!

The most recent additions to the P1 fleet are the Aston Martin DB9 and Porsche 997 Carrera S. P1 members will also be driving the Aston Martin DB9 Volante and Ferrari F430 from Spring next year, both of which have long waiting lists to buy. Due to its success the club can also now provide access to ‘can’t drive anywhere else’ cars like the new Ford GT. One of the 28 cars destined for Britain will join the P1 fleet in Spring 2005.

Up to 10 new members are admitted each month based on their driving experience, in line with growth in the fleet to maintain the high level of service and availability. Membership is limited overall to 250 places of which some 220 are already spoken for.



In addition to access to the cars, the club also runs a programme of social and driving events for members. This year’s P1 events included hospitality with the Audi UK team at Le Mans, a first floor balcony overlooking the start-finish straight at the Monaco Grand Prix and lunch at Goodwood House for the Festival of Speed as guests of Lord March. Members also have opportunities to take part in exclusive P1 track days which offer driving time in Radical SR3s, Ferrari Challenge, Porsche Carrera Cup and Formula 1 cars.

For further information about P1 membership visit www.p1international.com or telephone +44 (0)1372 374400, email: [email protected]

Photos: © Philip Hollis/Barrie Downie