I Have Seen the Future of Commerce and Its Name is Zipcar

Though I was partially raised in Manhattan, I had lived in Los Angeles for over fifteen years until I moved back to the island this fall. When I called my car my other son I was hardly joking. The first car I ever bought, back in 1990 was a 1988 Mustang 5.0 convertible, all black, all leather and all rumble. I traded that in for a series of other Mustangs over the years, always convertible, always black, until we were expecting our first child. We had a Ford Explorer for surfing and the coming baby and when the lease on my latest new Mustang was up I bought a 1973 Mustang convertible for $4500 to fill in until the baby came and I had to grow up.

Unfortunately, I fell in love. I obsessed over the classic Mustang restoring it back to pristine shape while my then wife was building our child. I tracked down the correct mag wheels, the deluxe Mach I hood with the black nostrils, the hundred-dollar steel- riveted gas cap. I kept the car through the divorce and it now resides in a garage in Los Angeles. I'm in the process of selling my house there and am starting to get my head around the idea of selling the car but that's much harder. I loved driving around LA with the top down, always down, setting off the car alarms of my neighbors' Beemers.

Here in Manhattan many of my friends own cars but I wanted to try living this past year without one. I have an unlimited subway and bus pass and its not unusual for me to ride a train or a bus six times a day. Besides, I'd tell my friends that I already had thousands of cars and they're all yellow.

Much more importantly, however, I looked around at how crowded this place is and I just didn't want to bring another metal baby into the world. I'd heard about Zipcar, a car-sharing service where you pay $10 an hour to take out the car when you need it but I figured it would be like the food coop my folks briefly had us join in the 70s -- all earth shoes and bearded stoners. Instead I discovered one of the most easy-to-use services I've ever done. I signed up online the night before, picked up my magical little card thing, made a res and was off to Ikea in Jersey in a new Ford Escape the next morning.

What they do, what Ikea does, what JetBlue does, is think about the user's experience minutely and anticipate your every need. Their philosophy seems to be the opposite of big, traditional companies who often seem to delight in torturing their clientele. When I needed extra time on the rental I just called up and three clicks on the automated phone system and I had bought myself an extra hour. When I cursed them from the Ikea parking lot because the car mysteriously wouldn't start, a nice guy on the phone reminded me that you unlock the car with your magic zipcard, not the key. Maybe if I read any of the instructions lying around I would have known that. But guys who drive vintage muscle cars aren't big on reading instructions.

Ikea was amazing as well. People shop at Ikea either in groups (jittery, new couples or parents and kids going off to college) or alone (the divorced, like myself, feathering a new nest). I'd bought dining-room chairs, finally, after living without for a year, and was pushing my cart to my car when I found cart blocked in by pylons. What was I to do? Run across the lot to the car and hope that nobody runs off with my Henriksdal chairs? I started to damn Ikea for punishing us singles, damn myself for not parking closer.

Then I noticed a bank of lockers with a chipper sign reading, "Shopping single? Why don't you lock your purchases in this locker while you bring around the car." The locker cost a quarter but you get the quarter back when you return the key.

I drove back into the city whistling.

--Trey Ellis