Car hire. Probably the two least-sexy words in the entire holiday lexicon. Hidden charges, insurance hard-sells, suitcases crammed into footwells to save £17 a day on the next class up. Yep, it’s been a while, I’m guessing, since a hire car got you hot under the bonnet.

It doesn’t have to be that way. A new company called, annoyingly, Vroomerz, promises to introduce you to a parallel automotive world that’s less supermini, more supermodel.

It works by bringing scores of disparate luxury car-hire firms across Europe under one umbrella, removing some of the “not for the likes of us” mystique and putting hundreds of head-turning vehicles at your fingertips.

There’s no pesky extra charge for dropping your car off at a different location from where you picked it up; you get the exact car you choose, rather than something “similar”; and the website couldn’t be simpler: pick-up location, drop-off location, dates, hit “search” and start fantasising.

They’re not giving them away, obviously — expect to pay anything from £100 a day to more than 12 times that, depending on model and time of year. But here’s how you are going to rationalise it: you’re making one of the worst bits of your holiday — the A to B tedium — the best. The car is the holiday.

So, for instance, you could have a Ferrari waiting for you at Milan airport, spend a leisurely couple of days driving it down through the ravishing Piedmontese countryside to the coast, swan along the Italian Riviera to Monaco, then drop it off at Nice airport before flying home.

I say “for instance”…

“Welcome to Milan,” says a beaming Oto, handing me the keys to the scarlet Ferrari California T parked behind him outside arrivals: £169,000 worth of exquisite Italian craftsmanship with a 3.9-litre, twin turbocharged V8 engine, 552bhp and a top speed of 196mph.

It’s both beauty and beast. It’s also — according to the editor of the Sunday Times Driving website — “the Ferrari for people who know nothing about cars”. Sounds about right. At home, I drive a Nissan Qashqai. Not so much prancing horse as obstinate donkey. 

Oto, an amiable Latvian who works for Prime Rent, the Italian agency handling my booking, spends 20 minutes patiently showing me the features: paddle-shifter gears; one-touch retractable hard-top roof; Turbo Performance Engineer display (no idea). Music? “You can connect to your iPhone via Bluetooth, if you wish,” Oto says. Pause. “But, trust me, you won’t want to listen to music.”