Inside the Collection Paris, a Members-Only Supercar Sanctuary in the City of Lights

If F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional character Percy Washington was alive and living in Paris today, he might boast not about his father owning “a diamond as big as the Ritz-Carlton,” but a secret club located in a designer parking lot underneath the Ritz, one bursting with Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Mercedes, Morgans, McLarens and even a couple of modern Formula 1 cars.

While that may sound as far-fetched as the diamond, it’s a dream come true for a couple of former Ferrari sales and marketing executives named Laurent Buisine and Hugo Valat. The Collection Paris is their brainchild, a private club for car collectors located under the Place Vendôme in a private subterranean parking lot. The Collection Paris adds the one luxury product missing, until now, from the Place Vendôme, with its jewelry stores, fashion brands, Ritz Paris hotel and other exclusive ateliers. Yet unlike the brand-centric boutiques in this regal square, the Collection Paris remains covert—or at least discreet—and dedicated to its 100 members.

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“It’s this privacy aspect that is extremely important to our members,” says Valat, “and being surrounded by all these luxury companies above contributes to the club experience. They can come in on a scooter, nobody recognizes them. Then they go out with their car, and when they return, they leave on a scooter again, and nobody has seen them.”

The black entrance to the garage looks like an after-hours key club, or as Valat puts it, “a speakeasy.” Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the realm beyond this door is a high-class antechamber, leading to a supercar wonderland: A car park of more than 86,100 square feet and 235 spaces—soon to be 315 with the new floor—that has been redesigned to look like a nightclub-cum-automobile showroom filled with a dizzying array of automotive classics and exotics; a mix that also includes examples from Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti, Lotus, Mercedes-Benz and Citroën. The Formula 1 machines look as if they made a wrong turn at the Rascasse corner in last year’s Monaco Grand Prix and ended up here.

At the moment, there are 190 automobiles belonging to the club members, which live in approximately 10 countries, including Kuwait, Taiwan, Qatar, Germany, Monaco, France and the US. Services include a car-detailing area where the vehicles can be entirely cleaned, waxed, and even have their paint touched up if necessary. Vehicle delivery and pickup is also an option.

The club has been designed to bring its members together socially, and offers themed experiences. And the location is, of course, part of the strategy. “We are an automobile club that associates hyper-luxury and the lifestyle side, and we work with the brands that surround us here, whether it is the great hotels, the great gastronomy, or others,” says Valat.