At the end of the 19th century, the car was a luxury reserved for the elite, but interested everyone, attracting crowds: in 1898, the first car show was held in Paris.
Car rental will see the light a few years later, across the Atlantic, but its development will be stopped by the first and then by the Second World Wars.
In the aftermath of the war, a Parisian entrepreneur revived the idea: “If you can’t afford to buy a car, why not rent one when you need it?”. His name was Raoul-Louis Mattei and in 1949, he created "L'Abonnement Automobile": a company that would later become the Compagnie Internationale Europcars, then Europcar. Its headquarters, located 11 rue du Champ de Mars also included a rental agency. The company's success was rapid, as car rental responded to a real need.
In 1951, l’Abonnement Automobile was the first company for car rental without a driver and its fleet counted 750 4 CV. Now, the Europcar Mobility Group has over 200,000 vehicles on average in its fleet and serves 5 million customers in more than 140 countries. But the vision our Group was founded upon remains the same, while being more relevant and promising than ever, as we are entering the usage and sharing economy era!
