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