How Chi Exotic Performance Left Turo and Took Back Every Booking
“I moved my cars off Turo and went private. Autoflow handles all the stuff Turo used to - but I keep the profit, control the booking, and vet every renter myself.”Melissa Barre, Founder, Chi Exotic Performance
Chi Exotic PerformanceChicagoChi Exotic Performance is Melissa Barre's exotic and luxury rental fleet in Chicago - a Lamborghini Urus, a Corvette C8, a BMW X5M Competition, a Porsche Taycan, and a lineup built to turn heads on Lake Shore Drive. Melissa moved the business off Turo and went fully private, and Autoflow is the system that made the switch stick: one dashboard for bookings, a direct booking link on every vehicle, digital contracts, payments and deposits, and ID verification on every renter - all the parts Turo used to own, now hers.
Leaving Turo Without Losing a Thing
Chi Exotic Performance built its name in Chicago the hard way - a fleet of exotics and luxury SUVs, real clients, five-star reviews. But running it through Turo meant renting on someone else's platform: their rules, their cut, their relationship with the customer. Melissa's read was simple. If the business could stand on its own, it should.
Going private is easy to say and hard to do. The platform you leave behind is also doing a lot of quiet work - taking the booking, collecting payment, holding a deposit, checking the driver. Walk away without a replacement and all of it lands back on you. That is the exact gap Autoflow was built to close.
The System That Made Private Stick
On Autoflow, every car in the lineup gets its own direct booking link. Melissa sends the link; the renter books, pays, leaves a deposit, and uploads their license without a phone call. Digital contracts and ID verification run on every reservation, so she vets each driver herself instead of trusting a marketplace to do it for her.
It swapped the old patchwork - the platform, the manual contracts, the spreadsheet - for a single dashboard, with live per-car analytics sitting on top of it.
Her Fleet, Her Customers, Her Call
The real difference between Turo and private is who owns the relationship. On her own booking system, Melissa keeps the renter's details, the repeat business, and the brand. Customers book Chi Exotic Performance directly - not a marketplace listing that happens to have her cars in it - and every dollar and every decision stays in Chicago with the operator who earned it.
Chi Exotic Performance is what going private looks like when the tooling actually holds. Melissa Barre didn't just cancel Turo - she rebuilt everything the platform used to do inside a system she controls, from the booking link on each car to the deposit hold and the ID check on every renter. The fleet is hers, the customers are hers, and the profit stays in Chicago. Autoflow is the operating system underneath it: "a life saver" that makes the booking and the tracking easier, so Melissa can spend her time on the cars and the clients instead of on the platform that used to sit between them.
Run your fleet like Chi Exotic Performance.
The operating system built for car-rental fleets - bookings, contracts, payments, and verification in one place.
Chi Exotic Performance
chiexoticperformance.comChi Exotic Performance is Chicago's exotic and luxury rental fleet - Lamborghini Urus, Corvette C8, BMW X5M Competition, Porsche Taycan and more, built so clients "turn heads wherever you go." Founded by Melissa Barre, it runs on a promise the site sums up in two words: "Luxury Awaits."
- Fleet
- 8+ exotic & luxury vehicles
- Based in
- Chicago, Illinois
- Flagship
- Lamborghini Urus
- On Autoflow
- Since 2025
Results
- Migrated off Turo to a fully private, direct-booking operation - without losing bookings, payments, deposits, or driver checks
- Every vehicle now takes reservations 24/7 through its own Autoflow link, with digital contracts and ID verification built in
- Replaced the Turo-plus-manual-tools stack with one dashboard and live per-car analytics
