MEET: ELITE MOTOR RENTALS:

Husband and wife trying to create a market for a ‘bucket-list experience’

Jared and Shannon DeBehnke own Elite Motor Rentals in downtown Las Vegas, where customers can cruise the streets in the three-wheeled Polaris Slingshot.

Elite Motor Rentals

• Address: 725 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Suite 260, Las Vegas

• Phone: 702-964-9777

• Email: [email protected]

• Website: elitemotorrentals.com

• Hours of operation: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. daily

• Owned/operated by: Jared and Shannon DeBehnke

• In business since: 2015

Describe your business.

Elite Motor Rentals specializes in renting the Polaris Slingshot, a three-wheeled sports car with 180 horsepower and weighing just 1,700 pounds.

Who are your customers?

Our customers are people looking to experience Las Vegas in a different way than just walking through the casinos or the Strip. They are people who want to explore the beautiful scenery of Red Rock Canyon or Mount Charleston, the Hoover Dam or other sights.

Or they are looking to see the Strip through the cockpit of a Slingshot — no roof or doors, just an unobstructed view of the city’s beautiful lights.

What’s something unique Elite Motor Rentals brings to Las Vegas?

Our No. 1 priority is customer service. We are committed to making sure our customers have the best time with us. We work with them on where they can go, or different things to see. We also custom tailor reservations to accommodate them as best we can.

We have over 200 online reviews and are sitting at 5 stars, and we work hard to keep it like that.

What’s the most important part of your job?

I would say, again, making sure that our customers are happy.

It truly is the best feeling when you hear people say, “This is the best thing we have done in Vegas!” or “You just made our vacation!”

We build relationships with our customers and we have had several people come back and see us again, or when their friends come out, they come in and say “our friends did this and said we have to try it!” We provide a bucket-list experience and people love it.

What is the hardest part about doing business in Las Vegas?

We deal with temperatures up to 117 and then all the way down to the 30s, and some days there are 80 mph winds and sandstorms. It’s been challenging to say the least due to the nature of our business.

Where do you see yourself and your company in 10 years?

We would like to see Elite Motor Rentals in several cities across the United States. We are already looking into a few markets now.

What obstacles has your business overcome?

One of the hardest hurdles we had to overcome was educating the public on our vehicles — what they were and what they can do with them. Answering questions like, are they street legal, can they go on the highway, are they electric, etc.? We were the first company that I know of renting Slingshots, so we had to educate our customers and kind of create the market.

What has been your hardest lesson in business?

I’ve been a entrepreneur my whole life, and I would say one of the hardest lessons would have to be: Things will not go as planned, so you better have good backup plans and the ability to make plans on the fly, because if you don’t, you will most likely not succeed.

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