Fantasy, in high gear

You’re fabulous. Don’t deny it. You know it’s true.

And yet, even with all your fabulousness, you are more or less the same, day in, day out -- which can be, not to put too fine a point on it, boring. Look in the mirror. It’s you again, isn’t it?

The fact is, it’s fun to be somebody else, and has been since you first went trick-or-treating in that plastic-chinned Superman mask or the hollow-eyed Cinderella face that made you look like hell’s housekeeper. Do we love to pretend? Yes, Mistress Dungeon, we do. Whole industries are built around helping us shed our skins, from the carnivals of Venice to Trekkie conventions in Vegas (be sure to ask for the room that looks like your parents’ basement).

In car-obsessed Los Angeles, a curious industry has sprung up catering to those who want to rent a fantasy ride for a day or weekend, to front like a high roller in a $200,000 Lamborghini or command the best spot in valet parking with a shiny Hummer H2 (actually, three or four spots). Do you and your spouse want to play a frisky game of Nick and Jessica? Rent a Mercedes-Benz G500 SUV, just like the one those crazy kids drive. Is your man mojo in need of augmentation? How about big red Corvette? Feeling puffy? Consider a weekend in a Bentley Azure, a $300,000 convertible motorcar favored by that mogul of materialism, Sean Combs.

Exotic vehicle rentals are make-believe for grown-ups. “Our business is all about helping people live out their fantasies,” says Chris McIntyre, president of EagleRider, a Los Angeles-based company specializing in renting Harley-Davidson motorcycles. “People land in L.A., get off the plane and leave everything else behind, just escape.”

Where else? Deep down, Los Angeles is -- to paraphrase Dorothy Parker -- really very shallow, a place where people are quick to make assumptions based on the kind of car you drive. And thus a perfect city for automotive masquerade.

I decided to put the transforming power of transportation to the test. The method: I rented four exotic vehicles in one week and took them to some of Los Angeles’ most famed thoroughfares, watching for people’s reaction. The object: to assume an alternate identity, to be an automotive Zelig, as it were, and to see how far and how long the illusion would last. The goal: to make people think I was someone, something, I’m not.

Let the games begin.

WeHo in a Cadillac

I’m not gay. At least I don’t think I’m gay. Wait, let me look at the new Sports Illustrated.... Nope, definitely not gay.

Even so, I have a pretty good idea of the kind of vehicle I need to cruise Santa Monica Boulevard -- a boulevardier, naturally enough, preferably a convertible, so I can, you know, work it. Something with a lot of style but not too patently nelly, no white Mazda Miata or turquoise Ford Thunderbird. Leave a guy a little mystery.

I find what I’m looking for at Beverly Hills Rent-a-Car: a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado, red with a leather interior whiter than Pat Boone’s shoes.

I pick up the car at the agency’s airport location, and it’s clear the Caddie is suffering fantasy fatigue. A big rubbery fissure bifurcates the dash. The proud wreath and crest emblem is crudely super-glued to the wood-grain trim. The air conditioner spews warm, Freon-scented air. On the freeway, the enormous, 20-foot-long Cadillac shimmies and shudders like it’s filmed in Earthquake Vision.

To drive a nearly 30-year-old car is to appreciate the little things routinely available on modern cars, things like brakes and steering. Even so, there is no denying the Caddie’s allure.

WeHo is car country. I see a spectacular ’59 Cadillac Coupe DeVille on Beverly Boulevard, a pink Checker Marathon on Santa Monica, and enough high-end Mercedes and BMWs to fill the parking lot of the German consulate. Not to mention the lurid glow of all the Ferraris and Aston Martins in the showroom of Heritage Classics in the heart of West Hollywood.

It’s well after dark on this cool Tuesday night, and the scents from a dozen haute eateries mingle with the faint reek of gasoline from the Eldo’s four-barreled carb. I’ve made several laps -- west on Santa Monica, north on La Cienega, right on Sunset and south on La Brea, all right-hand turns, to avoid stalling in traffic. There are signs along the route that say “No Cruising.”

As the Caddie labors up the hill on La Cienega, a black Grand Cherokee pulls up beside me. The window comes down. This is it. I’m being hit on. “That’s a beautiful car,” says an unusually lovely, and plausibly interested, woman behind the wheel. Alas, she’s the wrong gender. “Thanks,” I say in my most fey voice, which is not too different from my regular voice.

By 10 p.m., I’ve had a few interested looks and a meaningful exchange of hand signals with some older gentlemen sitting outside Rage, but nothing that I would call a pickup. And then, oddly enough, a pickup, a silver Dodge Ram with oversized polished wheels. Somewhere between Trunks bar and the BioChem billboard with the 15-foot biceps, the vehicles pair up in the stop-and-go traffic. “Nice car,” says the fat man behind the wheel. He’s about my age. “It’s a great night for it,” he adds at the next light. “You live around here?”

Hah! Success. He thinks I’m gay. Excellent. Hey, wait a minute. He thinks I’m gay!

A Viper on Sunset

This is the classic scenario, the archetypal L.A. arrival: You pull up to a jumping restaurant or club, preferably a place with a velvet rope behind which the less fortunate wait. The red-coat valets rush to open the doors of your exotic sports car and you emerge to the murmured envy of all. Your unattainably hot, impossibly leggy companion takes your arm and you glide past the gawkers while the valet gingerly maneuvers the gleaming machine into the premiere spot, right by the door. There the car throbs with cosmic cool while you dance the night away.

Your options are many. Perhaps a Ferrari Modena Spider, a Lamborghini Diablo (the newest Murcielago and Gallardo are not available as rentals yet) or maybe a Porsche 911 Turbo. I chose the 2004 Dodge Viper, which strikes a nice compromise between awesome, mind-tilting exoticism and cost. The Viper, an $80,000 car, can be rented from Budget Beverly Hills for about $800 per night, while a top-shelf Italian exotic can run four times that. How bad do you want to be cool?

The Viper is one of the world’s great sports cars: 8.3-liter V10 engine, 500 horsepower, six-speed manual transmission and stupid-big 13-inch-wide rear tires with which you can paint the town black. It accelerates from a dead stop to 60 mph in under four seconds, and the sensation is like being launched in a medieval trebuchet.

It is also one of the world’s least comfortable automobiles, a violent, gut-shaking, head-tossing monster, fully capable of dousing your companion’s amorous mood. So when my fiancee, Tina, and I reached the ultra-hip Chi Restaurant, in the Hollywood Hyatt on Sunset, she beats the valets to the door. She wanted nothing so much as out.

The satisfaction of being seen in an exotic sports car in this way is, in fact, terribly thin and ephemeral. On this night, at around 10 p.m., the entrance to the hotel is crowded with comely and complaisant young things who have compromised the nation’s strategic supply of spandex and saline. Unfortunately, they are too wrapped up in themselves to notice our arrival. I linger by the car. The valet looks at me strangely. “VIP parking?” he asks. “Very VIP,” I reply suavely, to which his unspoken response is evidently “Jerk,” or its Spanish equivalent.

The trouble with this whole scenario is that I can’t stand by the car long enough to really bathe in its reflected glory. So who, really, have I impressed? The valet? He would be far more impressed if I tipped him $50. I tip him $10 and he looks at me as if I’ve spit in his mother’s face.

Tina wants to know: Can she take a cab home?

A Harley on PCH

Few vehicles have the transformative power of a Harley-Davidson. In fact, the Milwaukee-based motorcycle company survives on the strength of this power alone, the bikes’ ability to make bankers, lawyers and real estate brokers feel, if ever so fleetingly, like Brando or Fonda or the governor of California.

In point of fact, Harley-Davidsons are heavy, slow and lumbering motorcycles. A typical Japanese sport bike will leave them in the dust. And yet there is a wonderful, essential quality to Harleys. For one thing, they are one of the last all-American consumer products. The big V-twin’s percussive idle note -- one-potato two-potato one-potato two-potato -- strums your homeland heartstrings like the national anthem.

For as big as they are, Harleys are effortless to ride, and once they are gathered up and pointed down the open road, they are serene, even hypnotic, with a deep resonant voice like a Tibetan throat singer.

“Plus,” says Eric Whitmore, an employee at EagleRider Motorcycle Rental in Los Angeles, “women love them.” He leaves me to draw my own conclusions.

EagleRider’s rental package is essentially turnkey, including helmet, chaps and a nifty orange-and-black leather jacket, much like the one Mickey Rourke wore in “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.”

My Harley fantasy will follow a classic California route: up the Golden State Freeway, then west on the 126 along the Oak Ridge of the Los Padres National Forest, then along the undulant two-lanes to Ojai, then back on the 101, to pick up the Pacific Coast Highway just north of Point Mugu, then back to L.A. About 150 miles or so.

I set out on a Saturday morning astride my rent-a-hog, a silver-and-turquoise Heritage Softail Classic, kitted out with silver-studded saddlebags, crash bars and a “cop windshield.” This is not exactly Captain America’s star-spangled chopper. Actually, it’s a pretty tame bike, a suburban special. For a more authentic look you may want to rent a Fatboy or Softail Springer. In any event, you will be riding a shiny $20,000 motorcycle, a fact that inevitably undermines your outlaw-biker street cred. Real bikers will smell your fear.

After an hour or so, I stop at a fruit stand in Piru. I park the bike carefully, in a spot where the ground looks solid -- I don’t want to walk away from a Harley only to have it fall over on its kickstand. I’m not even sure I could dead lift the 700-pound bike back on its wheels again. But I’m sure I would look stupid trying.

My leathery exterior and Terminator sunglasses notwithstanding, I don’t look particularly tough. We lean ectomorphs simply don’t have the wanton and menacing heft of real bikers. Nor, apparently, does my several days’ growth of beard, clearly evident at close range, convey my alpha-male volatility. Passersby seem singularly not intimidated.

That’s OK, though, because the fantasy lives and breathes with every sweeping curve and open lane when I twist the throttle and roll on the thunder. I am overcome with the urge to fire all of my guns at once and explode into space.

A Segway in Venice

Freedom and neurosis come together in spectacular fashion on Venice’s boardwalk, California’s most famous freak show. When a turbaned man in white flowing robes rollerblades past, playing Hendrix on an electric guitar and singing in a Bantu dialect, or when a nearly naked muscleman juggles iron balls in your face ... well, it’s just hard to get people’s attention.

The solution: a Segway Human Transporter, the high-tech, motorized pedestrian platform that debuted with so much hype and hope in late 2002.

The Segway, it’s fair to say, failed to live up to initial sales expectations. (My favorite Segway joke: It will revolutionize the way people are hit by cars.) Also, many municipalities, including Los Angeles, passed ordinances restricting their use. Almost two years later, most people have still never seen one in real life.

Yet they are fascinating machines, which you maneuver by gently shifting your weight on the platform. They are also extremely quick, capable of motoring down the street at more than 12 mph -- it doesn’t sound like much, but imagine moving 17 feet per second while standing on a shoebox.

You would think that Los Angeles would be home to a gleaming Segway showroom full of plasma screens and travertine walls. No. Moreover, there is only one machine available for rent, belonging to San Diego-based Seaway Rentals. To rent the lone Segway, you must journey to the Brea home of Garnet Madden, sister-in-law of Seaway Rentals principal Craig Lucero.

After watching the instructional video in Madden’s gingham-and-Hummel home, I load up the 83-pound machine in my car and take it to Venice Beach, where I am immediately surrounded by curiosity seekers.

How much does it cost? $4,495.

Is it easy? Very.

How’s it work? I’m not really sure. Paul Arnerik, an engineering student at the University of Wisconsin, offers: “It’s not really new technology. It’s old technology used in a new way.” We talk about laser gyroscopes and the right-hand rule (gyroscopic effect) before our conversation is overwhelmed by other inquiries.

“This is exactly the sort of thing I’d expect to find here,” says Garry Fishman, of Tarzana. “This is where a lot of fads start.”

After so many times as a passive observer, it’s fun to be part of the pageantry of Venice Beach. I am transformed, me and my gyroscopic legs, a 21st century Centaur, heading down the boardwalk.

At last, the center of attention.

Dan Neil can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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Makeovers on wheels

1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, red with white interior

Cost: $390 a day, plus taxes, from Beverly Hills Rent-A-Car;

50 miles free.

Know before you go: Compared with driving a modern vehicle, piloting a nearly 30-year-old Cadillac is like throwing a saddle over a brontosaurus. At highway speeds, the car whistles and shakes spastically, and the gentlest off-ramp is capable of inducing galvanizing fear. Please enjoy.

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2004 Dodge Viper convertible, black with black interior

Cost: $799.99 a day, plus taxes, from Budget Beverly Hills; 50 miles free.

Know before you go: Agency requires proof of full insurance, comprehensive collision and liability. Umbrella insurance provided by credit cards does not apply. The Viper is one of the world’s most uncomfortable cars -- cramped, claustrophobic cabin; a heavy, wearying clutch; and hyperkinetic steering. The Viper has truly ludicrous power (500 horsepower), which is more than sufficient to loop it in a parking lot. No one looks cool doing that.

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2004 Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic

Cost: $130 a day, plus taxes, from EagleRider Motorcycle Rental; unlimited miles, one-way rental available, free helmets.

Know before you go: Although big Harleys are easy to ride, they weigh more than 700 pounds and are not to be underestimated. You need a motorcycle license, and you must be at least 21. Credit card insurance is accepted, but added insurance is available, including VIP coverage ($24 a day) that lowers the deposit to $1,000. Above all, don’t drop it. It’s hard to look like a tough biker wearing a truss.

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Segway Human Transporter i Series

Cost: $250 for eight hours, plus taxes, from Seaway Rentals.

Know before you go: Seaway is based in San Diego, and only one machine is available in the L.A. area. For that you have to journey to Brea for pickup and return -- or pay $100 for pickup and delivery. A brief training session is required, though the Segway is as good as its advertising, in that it is easy and intuitive to ride. However, the machine has its limitations, beyond which you can find yourself tossed inelegantly upon the sidewalk for the amusement of those around you.

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Where to go

Beverly Hills Rent-A-Car, 9220 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 337-1400, or (800) 479-5996. www.bhrentacar.com. (Additional locations in Santa Monica, Los Angeles International Airport, Palm Springs and Newport Beach.)

An eclectic mix of the fast and spurious, including a white 1969 Cadillac DeVille and a Hummer H1 -- the ultra-butch big brother to the H2. The company offers a dizzying array of SUVs, such as a Mercedes-Benz G500, an Infiniti FX45, a Porsche Cayenne S and, naturally, the flyboy Cadillac Escalade. Italian sheet metal is well represented by a Ferrari 360 Modena, a Lamborghini Diablo and a Maserati Spyder GT. More Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Benzes and BMWs than the parking lot of the Vibe music awards.

Budget Beverly Hills, 9815 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills; (310) 881-2335. www.budgetbeverlyhills.com. (Additional locations in Marina del Rey, West Hollywood and Santa Monica.)

The “Fun” showroom includes a Mini Cooper S, a turquoise Ford Thunderbird and a Nissan 350Z. The bucks-up rentals include a Bentley Azure, Ferrari Modena Spider and Porsche 911 Turbo convertible.

EagleRider Motorcycle Rental, 11860 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 536-6777. www.eaglerider.com

A complete line of Harleys, from the dead-serious Fatboy to the mobile home on two wheels, the Electra Glides. Complimentary helmets, riding leathers at an additional charge. Thirty locations in North America and Europe; one-way rentals and tours.

Seaway Rentals, San Diego; (619) 368-3185, (866) 9-SEAWAY or (866) 973-2929. www.seawayrentals.com (see also www.segway.com)

A stable of six Segway machines based in San Diego. The company specializes in Segway tours of landmarks like Balboa Park and San Diego Harbor. A fun corporate outing, provided no one breaks a hip. Training and helmets provided with rentals. Private rentals can cost $300 per day.

Specialty Rentals, LAX and Santa Monica; (800) 400-8412. www.specialtyrentals.com

Broadens definition of “exotic” to include a Toyota Prius hybrid and a Ford Th!nk Neighbor, a four-seat electric cart for gated communities. Impressive collection of convertibles, including Corvette, Porsche Boxster, Volkswagen New Beetle, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Nissan 350Z, Lexus SC430.