Between the news that Hertz is buying 100,000 Teslas—sending its market valuation above one trillion dollars—and today’s 1993 Cutlass Ciera post, a car I rented way too many times, I pondered briefly what the most memorable rental car I’ve ever had. I’ll tell you after the jump, but it wasn’t really all that exciting. More like sad.
But I’m sure you’ve got a good (or bad) story about a rental car experience.
In December of 2008, right in the depths of the financial market meltdown we took advantage of dirt cheap airfares and absurdly low hotel rates to finally treat ourselves to a couple of weeks in Hawaii. In typical Niedermeyer fashion, no, we did not book a resort or time share; we decided to keep moving and see things.
The first ten days we spent circumnavigation the Big Island, in a really crappy 2008 Dodge Charger. Mediocre 2.7 L V6, and black Rubbermaid interior. It certainly didn’t spoil our fun, but it didn’t enhance it either. It was a splendid week, and we saw and experienced so much.
The second (short) week was to be a bit more relaxed, renting a house on Kaui, which is one of the smaller islands. The airport is pretty small too, because the big guys had crazy high rates, I ended up renting from a little local outfit, that had only used cars, like Rent A Wreck. I was given the keys to a very well used 1993 Camry V6, with 174k miles on it. It was technically a beater, especially the interior; not nasty, just well used.
But the quality of this old Camry still shone brightly. The V6 pulled as hard as ever, significantly more so than the Charger. The shifts of the automatic were both crisp and soft. The shocks were a bit soft too, but it still handled just fine. Ironically, this 15 year old beater quickly endeared itself as a vastly better car than the almost new Charger. My appreciation for these Camrys rose that much more.
On the way to the airport, we were in constant stop-and-go traffic on the main road (there are no highways per se on Kaui). I was behind a big, tall Ford pickup. At one point, Stephanie said: “Look at that gorgeous beach!” As if we hadn’t seen any constantly for two weeks. But I turned my head to look, and a second or two later noticed the Ford’s brake lights in my peripheral vision. It was too late: Kapow! I ran the nose of the Camry right into his big bumper and hitch.
The young driver was apologetic, as he admitted that there was actually no reason for him to stop so abruptly. There was zero damage to the Ford’s bumper, but the Camry’s hood was badly smashed, and steam erupted from the broken radiator. And our flight was leaving in less than an hour. I asked the driver if he could take us to the airport, and he obliged. We tossed our bags in the bed and hopped in. And I called the rental place and told them where they could find the Camry. And apologized.
I felt really bad about that, putting down a fine old steed like that which still had a few more years of life in it. FWIW, it’s the only time in my life I’ve totaled a car, and I’ve never had a crash of any sort since. And it had been a long time before that, too.
Distracted driving, the primary cause of all crashes.
There is a 1987 Mercury Sable with tooth marks on the driver’s side mirror because a lioness gnawed it while my father threatened to open my grandmother’s door.
(My instamatic 110 melted in the April Florida sun in the back window parcel shelf.)
I have only rented a car once in my life to drive on that was on a trip to Hawaii that I won in 1984. Rented in Oahu and think it was a small Japanese compact but really can’t remember.
Yes. distracted driving is no good. I never take my eyes off the road which is why passengers are not allowed to talk to me while I am driving a moving car.
Did that distraction cost you?
Nope. That’s what insurance is for.
Toyota Camry. It’s small trunk opening meant I couldn’t get a plastic lawn chair in and instead had to put it in the back seat. The significance was that it convinced me to get a hatch or wagon, specifically a Acura Wagon.
Planned a solo 5-day road trip around the Bay Area in CA for a mid-life birthday. I treated myself to an upgrade from my usual cheap-o compact to a full-sized car. I imagined myself in dark glasses cruising around those crazy mountain roads in a slick Avalon or Chrysler 300.
I got to the airport and discovered everything was rented except for the Honda Odyssey minivan they’d reserved for me. “You asked for a full-sized car.”
5 days in the California sunshine playing soccer dad (cue sad trombone).
My first. Me at 18-years-old, my family flew to Tampa/St. Pete to visit grandparents. My mom agreed to rent a car in her name and credit card and let me drive alone to Miami. ’78 Hornet four door? I picked up three hitchhikers on the way which, when she found out later, terrified my grandmother.
My big adventure. First time on an airplane, first rental car, first time renting a hotel room on my own. It was fun. Back in St. Pete I had a mission to buy up rust-free used VW heater boxes and ship them back to my job in Chicago. That’s when I found out that cars near the ocean rusted.
I was renting a series of cars for a while there, as the kids were younger and there were trips to make. Ended up with a wide variety of larger cars and SUVs, which made for great comparisons. The Dodge Journey, which I had never heard of, was actually not bad at all. Then there was the Chevy Captiva. I had never heard of that one, either. It was really awful to drive, in so many ways, and matched up really poorly against the Dodge. As good rental car experiences can be gateways to new car purchases, I wondered why GM was putting the Captiva out there. Then I found out it was a “fleet car only” vehicle. Sacrificing a good driving experience to flood the fleets with otherwise fairly unmarketable vehicles. GM had wandered away from even trying to please a potential customer, that’s for sure.
The Good: My wife and I rented a white Grand Am for our wedding day in 2005. Low-key, like us… somehow it was fitting. We smile whenever we see white Grand Ams nowadays for that reason.
The Bad (the circumstance, not the car): I was one of the many travelers stranded out of town after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I had flown the previous day from Baltimore to Jackson, Mississippi on a business trip and rented a Mazda 626. After two days of trying to figure out just what to do, I drove the 1,000 mi. back to Baltimore with another stranded traveler I met at the hotel. I remember calling Hertz and asking if it was OK to drive it on a one-way trip to Maryland, and they said “You know, we have no idea where our cars are right now, so just go ahead.” The car performed fine, but that was obviously a surreal experience.
Since I no longer travel for business, and haven’t flown in more than a decade, I haven’t rented cars in quite a while. I actually sort of miss it.
Wow, this is timely. I was looking at rental car prices then jumped over here to see this.
It was in July 1998, on our honeymoon. We were headed to Yellowstone and flew into Salt Lake City. The rental place was packed and they were having trouble honoring my reservation so I got the first car that came in. While my reservation was for a Pontiac Grand Am or similar, we received a 1998 Chrysler Sebring convertible with 700 miles on the odometer.
That was a great car in which to tour Yellowstone. We dropped the top upon entering the park and one could see nearly everything. Of course we got our scalps sunburned, but that’s what hats are for.
Paul, your experience with this, and a few other collisions, gave me the idea that we should do a post on your most memorable fender benders. We would all have stories to tell for sure. Maybe we’ve done that before.
So many rental car memories. Like Eric703, we (I) rented a car for our wedding day. Budget at the time had advertised that you could rent a Lincoln Town Car, at certain locations. I had to hop a transit bus to the airport to get one that I reserved, it was supposed to be black, but dark brown was OK. I still have the key for it, having dropped it in my suit pocket when I dropped it off the next morning. TER180 was the license number, I still remember it. What a great car, floaty suspension, living room on wheels in a good way. Power to spare when I had to dash back home to retrieve some necessary wedding accessory I had forgotten.
The first time I drove in England, I rented a Citroen Picasso, on a work trip, maybe 2007. Such a windowy car, lots of glass space, an automatic thankfully. I didn’t want my first right hand drive car to be a standard while navigating the M5 and the A303, after the red eye flight over and only an hour or two of sleep on the plane. I found a BBC station on the radio and they played songs, but only about halfway through as I recall.
Then there was the 2008 or so Mustang I rented in Phoenix to drive on a work trip to Tucson. This was the time before they had radar traps seemingly every few miles on the I-10, so I sceddadled along at a good 90 MPH clip.
Back in the ’70s a buddy and I rented a Gremlin from a Rent a Wreck place to drive to Windsor, about a 4 hour jaunt. Noisy, hot, uncomfortable are the words that come to mind.
Last one to share today is the 2012 or so Malibu I rented to drive again, from Phoenix to Tucson and back. After a lovely day visiting the Pima Air and Space Museum (a place well worth a visit for Curbivores with even a remote interest in airplanes), I headed back and was immediately met with a Haboob. It’s a rainy sandstorm that limits visibility to just about zero beyond the front edge of your hood. That white Malibu was a chocolate brown by the time I got to Phoenix and the storm had subsided. Had I not washed it before returning it, National would have thought I had returned a different car.
I have rented Mercedes’ in England, the Czech Republic, Camrys in Puerto Rico, and a Cadillac in LA. The Tercel I rented in LA that just about ran out of gas in Inglewood.
Stories for another time.
I think it was this storm in the Valley.
Pima Air and Space Museum is a great place, with plenty of stuff indoors and vastly more outdoors, including a B-36, with its six pusher propellers and four supplemental jet engines.
We were once taking a break at Toltec Road on I-10 when a dust storm caught up with us. We headed east towards the Florence Highway and headed back to Tucson on that road, appreciating the desert around us minus dust storms.
In 1987 I was playing fiddle and singing in the old time Cowboy music duo Horse Sense. In early December we had finished a nine nation tour of Africa under the auspices of Arts America program of the US State Department. It was a great time but also exhausting, so I was ready to relax for the Holidays.
I had musician friends in County Galway, Ireland so we made plans to spend Christmas and New Years together. This was pre-internet, so arranging for a rental car from Africa wasn’t working out that well. When I arrived at Shannon Airport it was late and the auto rental booths were closed, so I took a taxi into Limerick and spent the night. In the morning I got a much needed haircut. I mentioned to the barber my plans to rent a car, but that I wasn’t looking forward to the cost.
She mentioned her cousin had a rent-a-wreck business out by the airport if I wasn’t looking for something too fancy. I had had good luck with a similar business in Denver so I thought I’d give it a try. I took a taxi out there and the only non-lorry vehicle he had left was a beat up Hyundai with lots of bondo and four colors: the original blue, a red fender, a yellow door and lots of primer gray. Before signing the paperwork I asked if we were going to do the usual walk around to mark scratches and dents and he had a good laugh at that.
Once I was on the road I noticed the car was crabbing a bit. I checked the tires which were properly inflated, but unevenly worn, so definitely a bent frame. Not that it mattered too much. This was pre-Celtic Tiger West of Ireland and there were not many high-speed motorways or ring roads to bother with yet. Well, when I arrived at my friends and wherever else I went, I received more than my usual share of slagging for my “rich Yank luxury limousine” or “John’s Elvis Cadillac.” At least the drive train though typically underpowered was competent.
One morning I went out to buy some groceries and decided to drive the opposite direction from Tuam to see what I might find. I was cruising along on one of those roads that’s barely over one lane wide with stone walls and dense blackthorn on both sides when all of a sudden here comes a car headed right at me. I turned abruptly left (the correct direction fortunately) and heard a sickening scrape. The other driver and I surveyed the damage. His car was fine. The Hyundai had lots of surface scratches but no dents.
When I returned the Hyundai in Limerick I right away pointed out the scratches to the renter hoping not to get hit with any surprise fees later on. He looked at them, laughed and said, “Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have even noticed if you hadn’t said anything.”
Besides petrol, I think I only paid about $17US a day including taxes and fees, and I had many more memories than with the usual bland rental car.
Most impressed, about 2006: Rent A Wreck Corsica, one of the last built, I think a 96. Yes, it was dated, it rattled, it had spent at least ten hard years as a rental car (old Avis sticker on the window) …but whoever optioned it checked the right boxes: 3100 V6, 4T60E, A/C, ABS, and…that’s about it. Yes, it was a crank-window stripped car, but with the big engine…the paint was faded, there was a crease in the right rear door, one wheelcover was missing, the seat was worn…but it fired right up, the A/C blew cold, it got 26MPG despite the 80-85mph sweet spot…and it wore its 190,000 miles proudly. Yes, this Corsica had almost 200K…as a RENTAL.
Most expensive, 2007: Caprice wagon in the shop to get the A/C working, got a rental. Reserved a cheap car, my expected Kia Rio came back with a screw in a tire. So, upgrade: Charger SXT, 3.5 V6. Wow. Impressed. Bought a Magnum RT a few months later. That was about a $25,000 free upgrade.
Memorable for being bad — the 2004 or 05 Caviler I was given when I flew to Sacramento for a job interview just after college. I remember how the engine would vibrate harshly every time I turned the wheel all the way to one side like like when parking.
A bit earlier in 2004, traveling to a different job interview, I let myself be talked into paying for an upgrade to a Chrysler 300 (this was when Dollar exclusively rented Chrysler vehicles). That car was so smooth and quiet I kept driving way faster than I realized because it didn’t feel like I was going that fast.
The best time I ever had in a rental vehicle was when I first went to Barbados. I rented a Mini-Moke, and it was lots of fun. I ended up working down there, managing a $10 million rental villa, so I made sure the owners bought a new Moke for us to drive.
I’d have to say my most memorable was probably trying out SilverCar.com when they were still a new thing. For once getting the exact car I reserved since they only rented new silver Audi A4 Quattros at the time was refreshing as was the way their entire staff conducted themselves and seemed genuinely pleased to be working there. I’ve used them a few times since but not recently as the prices seem to have increased when Audi actually bought them out.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/new-cars/rental-car-classic-2015-audi-a4-quattro-s-line-from-silvercar-com-finally-a-better-option/
I still have the T-shirt they sent me (along with a few free rental days) after I complained that they didn’t ask me or anyone at CC permission to repost one of my pictures on their twitter feed…
I think the only time I’ve ever damaged a rental car was getting a rental Audi A4 TDI Avant in Germany stuck on a set of railroad tracks well away from the crossing and tearing apart the entire underbody plastic shielding trying to extricate it before a train came along. After another week of driving around in it through various countries with bits of it flapping around we parked it deep in a dimly lit underground garage in Paris, shoved the keys through the office door mail slot in the middle of the night with a note as to the spot number attached and took the RER train to the airport as it was cheaper than dropping it at CDG…Not my proudest driving moment but still probably less abusive to the car compared to the dozen or so hot laps around the Nurburgring it endured.
My first rental was a Renault Alliance in San Diego in ’85. I pulled into traffic out of the lot, the car had almost negative power, and I was nearly runover by a 70’s Lincoln. On the flight back to Dulles, stopping in LAX, my step-aunt’s ex-husband sat down next to me on an almost empty widebody. He didn’t recognize me, despite my distinctive appearance.
On an office sky trip to Colorado a year or two later, eight of us crammed into a long Dodge van that could barely get up the mountains with my foot on the floor. I had to drive because I was the only person over 25. Scary going downhill, too.
Toyota Echo, several years back. High seating position amplified the motions created by it’s short wheelbase and narrow track. Yup, auto mag scribblers nailed it, like riding in a Tilt-A-Whirl.
Like Dutch 1960, I too had a Dodge Journey when I flew into Denver to see a high school friend for the first time in 10 years. I was supposed to get a intermediate with a free upgrade and they kept trying to give me compact cars. I hmmed and hawed so the attendant just gave me the Journey to get me out of her hair. As much as the Journey is dogged on, it was the perfect vehicle for 4 of us to bomb around in and sight see in the mountains.
The worst rental I had was when I flew back to Denver a few months later to attend his wedding, a Chevy HHR. This time I wasn’t so lucky and Enterprise was just about out of cars. I took the HHR thinking it might hold luggage a little better than whatever 4 door econobox that was my other option. I hated that car for the week I had it. It was gutless, got terrible fuel economy, and just felt cheap.
I’ve taken pictures of some of the rental cars I’ve had over the years. Does anyone else do that?
I have taken pictures of every rental car I’ve had, dating back to th 1970s. It’s a sort of superstition!
I do that too! (take the pictures of my rental cars) There are hundreds of these buried in my stacks of negatives and now digital files.
I take before and after pictures to document any scrapes or dings that I might be charged for, that’s about it.
Up until COVID shut down pretty much all of my work travel, I’ve averaged renting about 10 cars a year for over 30 years and never once have I had a rental car agency try to go after me for minor damage. Part of that is that I’ve never done any non-minor damage to a rental car (knock on wood), but for the most part I’ve found that the major rental car companies that I rent from pretty much expect dings and scratches and don’t bother the customer.
An exception to that experience is nearly anything related to U-Haul. There I usually welcome the pre-rental walk-around because they generally seem keen to find something to try to charge you for. But I guess that makes sense too given the thrashing that it seems many people give those trucks/etc.
My most surprising – I had been out of the country for some years back in the 80’s doing the ex-pat thing and had lost track of the U.S. car market. Anyhow I arrived late at night at LAX and went to AVIS for my car. At the counter, the Bright Young Thing said, “I’m sorry Sir but all we have left are Pontiac LeMans.” I naively said, “A LeMans? Nothing wrong with that.” I thought that the agent gave me an odd sideways look, but had no idea why. I took the keys and went out to find my assigned car. In a couple minutes I was back. “I can’t find my LeMans. All I see are a couple of tiny little economy cars.” She said, “Sir, those ARE Pontiac LeMans”. I hit my head on the door frame of the that tin can trying to get in the thing and then the dash knob to turn on the headlights came off in my hand.
Lovely, GM, simply freakin’ lovely.
Hmmm. There was the time in Houston where, even though we had requested a small car like a Ford Escort or similar, all that kept coming were ’88 Lincoln Town Cars. So we had a Town Car to tool around in. No, I didn’t feel the urge to buy one. It was cushy in the extreme, and yet just didn’t have the fit and finish I would have expected from a full-on luxury car.
In ’92 we planned a road trip from Tucson to Salt Lake City, where my father-in-law had moved for a job, and then to visit friends in Wyoming. We rented a ’92 Taurus and put about 3,000 miles on it. It seemed like practically the perfect car, and influenced us to buy a couple years later a ’93 Mercury Sable. Alas, the Sable had the 3.8 V6 that had gobs of torque but a tendency to run hot. Other maladies appeared with that Sable, and eventually the dreaded head gasket failure. But that ’92 Taurus was memorable for how well it behaved and how comfortable it was.
Once in San Diego we rented what was supposed to be a mid-sized car that turned out to be one of those Pontiac G-somethings that was just plain cheesy. What I remember most is the vast plain of hard black plastic door cards, devoid of any distinguishing features.
Another time in San Diego, we ended up with a PT Cruiser convertible, a truly fun little car. The Sebring we ended up with a year later was undistinguished in comparison, and the top took up half the trunk.
Fortunately, never any disasters, and some fun rides along the way.
Since I rented card often for some years, I encountered the usual crop of oddities. In Philadelphia, a headlight on an early-90s Pontiac Grand Something exploded…the polycarbonate housing, not the halogen bulb which shine on, hanging loosely in its socket by its wiring.
In Dallas, a Chevrolet Beretta trapped me inside: when I closed the door after filling out the paperwork, something fell apart in the door, and not only could I not open it, whatever it was jammed the window. I found the front passenger door was already broken the same way!! I crawled into the back seat, where I found that someone had set the child-safe locks so they would not open from inside. So I got somebody’s attention by leaning on the horn until someone came out from the office.
In Sydney, NS, Canada, the rental franchise, a used car dealer, ran out of cars so they rented me a ten year old Chevrolet Nova which had 100,000km and a weak cylinder but at least was clean. It was late when my flight arrived and I needed to be seventy miles away, so the next morning, I called the corporate office to complain. When I turned the car in three days later, the franchise owner apologized profusely and the rental was complimentary…no doubt he had gotten a chewing-out especially since the rental had been reserved three weeks in advance.
But the weirdest experience was posted a couple of days ago in a comment to Daniel Stern’s last COAL:
“Strange things found in old cars, I can’t recall. Maybe unlike Daniel, I have not had enough old cars pass through here. But strange things in rental cars, yes. I used to rent cars several times a year.
Cheap rental car companies often did not clean out the glove box. Think about that next time you leave something behind and call up to see if it was found. (Hint: “NO.) One time in a Slant Six 1978 LeBaron in SoCal I found a women’s panty girdle in the glove box. Whether it was there after a nocturnal tryst or after its wearer decided, “My Girdle Is Killing Me,” and took it off inside the car, I don’t know. But from then on, I always checked the glove box before leaving the rental lot. At least my wife didn’t find it.”
“Hey honey, look what someone left in the rental!” is a game I’m not sure I want to play, but at least someone’s rear enjoyed that Fine Corinthian Leather…
Did rental LeBarons get the leather?
Correction: that Chevrolet in Dallas had to be a Corsica. The Beretta was the two door. Both were pretty bad but Chevy decided to name one for a French resort island and the other for a 9mm automatic handgun. It was an insult to the Beretta handgun. I’ve never been to Corsica.
Most memorable rental experience started on the day of Reagan’s 2nd inauguration (Jan. 1985). It was bitterly cold that morning in the VA suburbs of Washington, DC (minus 15 degrees F), and the company car I had borrowed, a 1982 Chevy Cavalier, would not start. So my wife and I drove to the airport in our 1980 Volvo 240, the first leg of a business trip to Albany, NY.
At the airport, the plane I had boarded developed a mechanical issue (I don’t recall if it was related to the cold), and we all had to get on a different airplane. In Albany, my partner and I had rented a full-size Dodge Ram van, fairly well equipped. We were still on airport property when the transmission decided neutral was the only available gear.
We coasted to a stop on the 4-lane road without shoulders. My partner hitchhiked back to the airport while I flagged oncoming traffic to go around the disabled van.
Our replacement van was an absolute stripper 15-passenger Ford Econoline in fleet white. Lots of bare metal inside, and we certainly didn’t need the seating capacity. The jokes started immediately about our “luxury van.”
We got caught in a snow squall on I-90. There was lots of salt on the road, and the windshield washers stopped working. It was very difficult to see through the windshield with all the salt spray along with the snow. We stopped to check the fluid level, but it was fine. We were forced to detour into a town along the way that had a Ford dealer. Luckily, the dealer was able to fix the problem without too long a wait.
Later during that week, heavy snow scuttled the final leg of the journey to Watertown, NY, forcing us to spend an idle day during the storm in Rome, NY before we could head back to Albany.
My strangest rental was in Aberdeen Scotland. 3 adults and 3 teenagers from a Drum band, we went to the rental the night before collection to check the 1995 VW diesel 5 cylinder Caravelle 9 seater. They told us the car was not available because it was broken and they had no other suitable car…. and we had to get to London within 3days. I asked what the problem was… The sliding pass entry door was off the car because of broken or missing parts and their handyman had given up fixing it..
I said let me look at it. After 20 minutes I found all the missing parts on the floor and glovebox and door pockets and fitted all together within 15. It was surprisingly simple to do ( I do have a mechanical background) and we drove off that evening with an extra 3 days of free rental given as thanks. Car performed well and door stayed functional.
Red eye to Heathrow with an early morning arrival. Middle seat in the back so no sleep. Grab a rental. Couple hour jaunt up the motorway to Birmingham. What could go wrong?
Quite a lot actually. Darn shame to get this old and still need a lesson in the hazards of driving while over tired. I now make it a rule to take the train after a night flight. No matter how wide awake I may feel upon arrival, I’ve resolved not to let haste write checks my body just can’t cover anymore.
That was a darn big truck I drove into. As we were traveling in the same direction at closely matching speeds, it could have been a lot worse. Driving up the embankment it was just luck I didn’t roll that Toyota.
God does truly give idiots a little extra help sometimes.
I’ve had the usual lame domestic rentals, dating back to Pinto days, through to Tempo’s and Grand Am’s, though my own 2.7 Chrysler 300 experience was quite pleasant. But pretty much everything I’ve had in Europe has far exceeded expectations, even though they have been modest cars; perhaps it was the novelty. The best was a 2004 Renault Megane diesel. I assumed it was a 2.0 based on the peppy feel, so was shocked when I finally opened the hood and saw 1.5, or perhaps it was 1500, on the cam cover. I wasn’t a fan of the goofy Avantime styling from pictures I’d seen, but the space utilization and roominess for our family of four with luggage was amazing. Almost as amazing as the fuel economy.
Dodge Journey, a real crapmobile. Pretty mediocre vehicle. (Still better that than a Tesla or other electric boondoggle car.)
Rented dozens of cars on business and personal travel over the years. Usually Hertz, as my employer had a discount program with them. Usually booked a mid-size, and since I rented quite often at the time, was frequently upgraded gratis, sometimes to a Caddy or Lincoln. Nothing particularly memorable. At one of their airport locations (forget which) they had a set up where you would walk to the appropriate section of the garage and pick any car you wanted. I liked that.
After the last hail storm in Calgary, a couple months ago, I rented a Spark as my Escape was being repaired. As I was doing the pre rental look-over with the rental guy, his partner came out with a clipboard and stood directly in front of the passenger front fender to ask his coworker some questions. Of course, I skipped looking at that section. When I got the car home, I noticed a hand-sized dent in that fender.
I drove the car back the next day and firmly insisted that the dent had already been there when I rented it. Thankfully, the guy updated the sheet with the dent.
Was his partner hiding something? I’ll never know.
Meanwhile the guy at the repair shop took our Escape off site and got rear-ended. Totaled. Insurance paid us out. We bought another Escape, a 2017 Titanium, with the proceeds.
It had the dreaded coolant leak into the cylinder, which I noticed when I brought it home. The dealership paid for a brand new engine.
I guess I’ve got two answers. Here’s the second one:
I had a thoroughly disagreeable new Chrysler 200 as a rental for about 750 miles and five days in the winter of 2016. I’ll give it this: the driver’s seat was supportive and comfortable for long trips, and the pretend-analog speedometer was easy to read. That’s where the praise ends.
The electric power steering felt like a toy kiddy-car (steering wheel not connected to anything).
The controls were thoughtlessly designed: turn-dials of almost identical size, shape, and feel, and all located close to one another, for the blower speed, radio volume, and gear selector (I get it, shifters don’t need to be sticks any more because they’re just selector switches, but this has led to a proliferation of dumb designs; here they were trying and failing to ape BMW).
A random selection of the HVAC controls were poorly-labelled buttons; the equally-random rest of them required navigation through multiple menus to access via the touchscreen. None of it was at all intuitive or thoughtfully configured.
The transmission was sluggish to engage and randomly drunken in its shift quality. It was a 9-speed. Raise your hand who feels like being on the hook for its overhaul when it fails…yeah, me either.
The electric parking brake sometimes required two switch pushes (pulls) to release (apply), sometimes three, and sometimes just one. No consistency to it.
The 4-cylinder engine idled with noticeable harshness, much more so than Chrysler’s 2.5-litre 4-cylinder of the ’80s and ’90s.
The blue lighting on the IP wasn’t obnoxiously piercing, but the digital speedometer/message center was a damn pain. Push any button that affects it and you get to read all about how you’ve pushed that button for multiple long seconds until it remembers that oh yeah, the driver might’ve maybe kinda wanted to see the speedometer. The tachometer was just as pointless as ever.
The rearview mirror was this ridiculously giant, chunky thing—it contained no compass, no auto-dim, no reading lights, etc; it was just a mirror—positioned such that it blocked an unreasonably huge proportion of the view through the windshield. I’m sure the sideview mirrors met the minimum legal field-of-view requirements…and I’m equally sure that’s all they only just barely did.
The headlamps weren’t abjectly inadequate, but they were also a whole hell of a lot less thoughtfully engineered than they could’ve and should’ve been for no additional money: way too much foreground light and not nearly enough seeing distance on low beam; high beams almost marginally adequate. Taillamps were functionally marginal, too.
But really, none of the above complaints matter at all. Know why? Because the radio could not be turned off. It could be muted—temporarily, until either the next engine start or one of a fairly long list of buttons or dials was touched, then it would come blaring and barking back. I looked in the owner’s manual: not a thing on how to turn it off. I looked on Google: lots of threads in the forums with people saying “I just bought/rented a 200, how do you turn off the radio?” and the answer was uniform: You don’t. Because some damn dillweed decided an on-off switch isn’t necessary. Infuriating!
The cruise control switches were on the steering wheel, where they were on the Spirit/Acclaim of 25 years before. Right place for them, but the ones in the 200 could not be operated by touch because they all felt alike—not like the ones in the Spirit/Acclaim, which, like that car’s HVAC controls but not the 200’s, could be accurately discerned, selected, and operated without looking. The 200 overwall was adequate, and not a bare shred more; nothing about it any better than it minimally had to be. It was only better than the Spirit/Acclaim because people’s expectations, even the bottom end of them, advanced in the two and a half decades.
I could not see making or buying this car ever having been a good idea. At best it was uncompetitive.
(…and the squashed/arched roofline made ingress and egress a nuisance, and the mile-deep dashboard was a hideous waste of space, and…)
“But other than that, did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
Well the 200 is off my list for future beater for sure.
Which would be worse, a radio you can’t turn off or one that makes engine sounds? https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a7923/the-rise-of-the-fake-engine-roar-11291754/
I’m not seeing this as an either/or, but more of a neither/nor.
Odd…I rented a 200 (oddly, a 200 Limited with the Pentastar V6 and 6-speed automatic) and was quite impressed. Powerful, comfortable, good mileage…the 2.4/4A Avenger I rented was not nearly as impressive…and used just as much gas.
…and here’s the first:
When it came time to move my husband’s mother—no, I’m not going to call her a mother-in-law—out from her house, I rented a U-Haul cube truck. I think it was a 20-footer, something like that, with a Ford F-series cab. A ton of snow had come down, and more was thickly falling. I had to back into the narrow driveway, made narrower and much more angularly constrained by the snowbanks. I manœuvred the truck more-or-less perpendicular to the driveway, took a hard look in the left sideview mirror, put the truck in Park, unbuckled my seatbelt, scooted over and took a hard look in the right sideview mirror, put the truck in Reverse, and—using my mental image of what I’d seen in the mirrors—reversed into the driveway in one go. I put the truck in Park, set the brake, shut it down, and went in the house to find Bill looking, jawdropped, out the window at the truck perfectly parked dead-centre in the drive. “How’d you do that?” he asked. “I used the force”, I said.
That was the high point of a real grind of a move.
Omni GLS-H, the Shelby tuned one. First one had no AC, a non-starter in Ft Worth in August. Went back, got another and had a fun week. (Well, fun driving. The project I was working on wasn’t.)
Next trip rented one again. Got to the parking lot at the plant and smoke started curling out from under the hood. Guy in a pickup cam running with fire extinguisher. When I opened the hood, there was no fire, but the AC drive belt was bubbling and smoking. Well, I thought, that explains the first car without AC.
Spent the rest of the project in more boring cars…
Orlando FL, 1998. I too, tend to go for cheap rentals, got a brand new KIA Rio, less than 200 miles on it. Got to hotel just fine. Next morning, I leave to go somewhere. Can’t remember if it wouldn’t start, or did start and ran like crap. Sometime during the night, maybe when the intake manifold cooled down and contracted, the hose between it and the mass air sensor popped off! Don’t remember if the car came with a cheesy tool kit or I simply borrowed a screwdriver. Got it back on, checked all the other clamps, ran great the rest of my trip. First rental car I ever had with that low of miles, first rental car I had to repair in my hotel parking lot!
About 20 years ago I attended a work-related event at UC Santa Cruz. I flew from LAX into Monterey and rented a new Oldsmobile Intrigue from Hertz. IIRC it had about 30 miles on the odometer. I stayed overnight at an area hotel and went to the event the next day. At the campus we were directed to a parking lot on a hill. The day went well and I was ready to drive back to Monterey to return the car and fly home.
As i approached the sparkling new Intrigue I was greeted by quite a sight. Another event attendee had parked her Kia Sportage at the top of the hill but failed to set the parking brake. The Kia rolled into the Intrigue’s left rear quarter panel and bumper. The very apologetic Kia owner appeared and moved her car. Some fellow got a crowbar out of his trunk and pried the Intrigue’s crumpled quarter panel away from the wheel so I could drive off. The quarter panel was barely attached and swinging in the wind. We exchanged information and I drove back to Hertz at the Monterey airport. The crumpled car elicited a startled look and then a laugh from the lot attendant. Because my university employer carried damage waiver liability coverage, there was very little paperwork required and I made my flight home on time. Completing the form required an unusual response: no drivers involved in the accident.
You should have taken a picture of that car at UCSC for posterity. I live in Santa Cruz, and Olds Intrigue sightings are far rarer than whales, or Cutlass Ciera’s, or even Aurora’s.
I rented a Taurus in the New York area once that had tires bald though to the cords. I hadn’t looked at the tires when I rented it (late,.after a delayed flight from San Diego with 3 kids under 7). I discovered it when it started hydroplaning in a very frightening manner in a wild thunderstorm.
Tires are now the first thing I check.
Nothing exotic but I managed to get keys to a brand new Holden Commodore VR at Hobart Airport, Tasmania in 1994, with delivery mileage only on the clock. This was after the Corolla I had originally reserved was given to someone else. So, bigger car, no extra charge! The fuel consumption wasn’t much worse as compared to the Corolla either owing to the relatively traffic-free roads in Tassie.
Managed to pile on 2,000+ kms (approx. 1,200 miles) in four days, rendering it due for its first oil change – back then service intervals were much shorter.
Solo road trip across and return across the USA in 2012. I rented a 2011 Malibu, deliberately chose a bland colour. A week into the trip, east bound on I-10 in Texas in a 85 MPH section. I thought I’d determine what the Malibu’s top speed was.
I’m into the nineties, when I see a Crown Victoria, lights on, and crossing the median strip. When it appeared in my mirrors, I knew it was me he was after.
I pull over, keep my hands on the wheel as Officer Carl Mitchell came over, asked for my licence, and my Queensland, Australia licence doesn’t faze him. Asks for rental agreement, I tell him ‘it’s in the boot”, then translate into American English.
Ended up with a written warning “that would not appear on my licence” A few days later I emailed the Texas Dept of Public Safety, complementing them on the courtesy and professional conduct of the officer Mitchell. A far cry from the arrogant, uniformed members of the Queensland Highway Patrol!
Later on the same trip I’m chasing aircraft photos in Mojave, ( the entire road trip revolved around cars/planes/ warships/ tanks), and driving around the perimeter track of the airport in Mojave. Nearly bogged the Malibu there, but momentum was my friend!
The story of the Mitsubishi Outlander and the KC-97 boneyard will be another post.
My most memorable rental was all down to the circumstances. It was Easter 1998, and it was a first proper holiday away with my future wife. We rented a Fiat Uno in Dublin, and spent a couple of weeks hooning around the windy roads of rural Ireland. A very memorable holiday for all kinds of reasons.
The car was tinny and cheap of course, but with its light weight, small size and buzzy engine it was an absolute bucket of fun on those narrow undulating roads. I’ve had many rentals since, but this stands out as the one that was most perfectly suited to purpose.
This has been a fun thread. I have 3
Best – On our honeymoon, we got a 1990 Mustang LX convertible for a week. White car, red interior, V8 auto. It was a delight.
Worst – a 1986 trip to Connecticut for a friend’s wedding. I got a Chevette. I had enough wheeltime in Chevettes that I tried to get something else but that was all they had. Worse, it had the nastiest front end shimmy at 55-65 mph of anything I have ever driven. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.
Favorite – In 1978 my own car was out of commission for an extended vacation in a body shop for rust work and a repaint. My father rented a car for me for a weekend to drive up to his lake cottage. He probably did not tell them it was an 18 year old driving it. I got a triple black 1978 Dodge Diplomat sedan with a 318. Maybe it was because it was my first rental, maybe because I was a huge Mopar fanboi at the time, or maybe because it was the first car I could easily get to 100 on the highway, but it remains my all time favorite rental.
Best rental car experience was renting a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited with Mrs DougD in Hawaii. She had a medical research conference (remember conferences?) in Hololulu, and afterwards we went to Maui for a week. We were driving along the coast to Lahaina and she looking in the guide book she said “Hey it says here there’s whales near Hawaii this time of year”, we looked at the ocean and right on cue a whale breached. Amazing.
I’ve been pretty lucky to never have a really bad experience with a rental car. Lots of unremarkable mid size sedans. One of my co-workers once hit a deer in Utah, and returning the car back at the airport was presented with paperwork to fill out for the incident. He wrote WE HIT A DEER across the top page in big letters, handed it back and went to catch his plane.
When I was in high school (around 1991), my mother and I took a trip to Florida to do the Disney World thing.
She rented a Cavalier, which seemed to work fine for the trip, but we weren’t going too far anyway.
We were there over the holidays, and spent New Year’s Eve at Epcot Center to watch the fireworks. Traffic was heavy leaving the park, so we didn’t get out of the area until after 1AM.
Driving through the outskirts of Kissimmee, the car started sputtering. It was showing a 1/4 tank of fuel remaining, but was acting like it was out of gas. She pulled into the first station she saw, where the car quit and rolled to the pump. The car was completely empty, but showed 1/4 tank.
We were lucky that it was a 24 hour station, or it would have been a long night.
I rented a VW Rabbit for work in the early 80s. Location was NYC and my employer managed to find the worst off-airport rental location. Requirements included washing the car and leaving the tank empty at the conclusion of the trip. Of course, I had become used to having a new rental with a full tank, so I paid little attention to the gas gage which read about 1/4 tank. Little did I know that 1/4 tank on that car really meant you were on fumes. Ran out of gas somewhere in the Bronx, so had to walk and get gas. The station owner wanted a $50 deposit for the gas can, so I asked him what he wanted for me to buy it. $50 was the answer. I did get the money back when I returned to gas the car, fortunately. I was quite angry, so I didn’t fill the car at the time, but kept track of the miles I drove so that I could return it close to empty at the end of the week.
That reminds me of my Bronx rental experience, also in the eighties. I got a Dodge Daytona, the FWD K Car coupe, at Hertz at LaGuardia, for a business trip up towards Albany. As soon as I got up to speed on the freeway I realized it had a very low rear tire, so I pulled off and got out to check it. Almost instantly an NYPD car pulled up, and the officer told me in no uncertain terms that it was not safe to be outside the car, to get back in, lock the doors and follow him to a gas station that was across from the police station. I aired up regularly on that trip and finally got the tire swapped out at the Hertz location at IBM in Poughkeepsie. Yes, IBM had its own Hertz lot. By the way, Hertz had told me at pickup that I was getting a free upgrade to a “sports car”. Trust me, that base Daytona was no sports car.
Worst rental was this Rover 400. Noisy, buzzy, no power under 4000rpm, vibrated above 70mph, and shoddy workmanship.
Best rental was a tie between the Scirocco and the A3.
A3
For the most part I’ve been lucky that most rental experiences are not memorable. I don’t expect much except a functioning vehicle. I’ve probably rented a vehicle maybe 10 times at most. What I can remember.
Maybe my first rental was a Rent-A-Wreck in Madison, WI in early 1987. I think it was a Colt. I was looking for housing since I matched to the Univ Wisconsin-Madison Hospital for a June start date. That Colt had a timing issue and stuttered with every touch of the accelerator. I only needed it for one full day, found a place and went home. But this got me a set of roommates that eventually led to meeting my wife.
Speaking of future wife, I met her at a wedding in CA in 1996. I can’t remember what I rented from SFO down to Mountain Valley for my Madison WI roommate wedding. The car did fine is all I remember. I flew BOS-SFO-BOS in 28 hours as a standby. And J’s business card.
A year later we met for the first time since the wedding since we lived on opposite coasts. She was going to FL for winter holiday (her parents lived near Ft. Myers) so I arranged for myself to go to Miami ostensibly to see my grandmother, who had an unused condo in the city. However, it took a full day of calls in late Dec to find a rental car, and finally found one, from a local firm, for a Taurus station wagon in fleet white. It actually was a decent car. However, evading my grandmother was too much too bear and after I took J back to Ft Myers (via Alligator Alley), she wouldn’t speak to me for 10 years.
A rental car in Raleigh in 1999 (a Ford is all I remember) was memorable for my radar detector was stolen out of it in the hotel parking lot because I forgot to lock it. As it turned out, radar detectors were on their way to becoming obsolete. I never replaced it.
2011 when my 2001 Frontier had its transmission travails (lesson learned the hard way: the transmissions are one use only for pulling 5×8 single axle U-haul trailers), so the dealership lent me a new Nissan Cube. I have to admit is was a decent urban recon vehicle-quick, maneuverable, easy to park, seats four easily and some space for luggage and groceries, but I used it on the highway and it wasn’t so impressive because of the tall stance and short wheelbase and buffeting winds. I got my truck back with a used transmission and I still have the truck.
In 2013 I totaled the 2002 Chrysler T&C van in a high-speed crash involving 4 cars on I-85. While looking for another car (ultimately going back to Raleigh to retrieve my 2001 Nissan Frontier as full time wheels), I had two rentals: the Chevy Cruze actually impressed me. The Nissan Versa looked and felt really cheap and left a lot to be desired as a daily driver. It wasn’t quite as bad as mom’s 1978 Chevette but too close for PTSD.
In later 2013 I took a spontaneous trip to Providence RI because my former gf had an art showing at a place where her husband did open mike music. I got a Buick Century which was adequate. I only had it for 24 hours. The art on display showed why she was probably the most talented gf I ever had (and thankfully I didn’t see her), but the downside was I couldn’t figure out where my parents lived in East Greenwich (I later figured it out) and the tollways to the islands were outrageously expensive for out-of-state people (mom’s favorite house we lived in was near Newport). I learned that open mike auditions can be excruciating. And karaoke is bad enough.
I know we got rentals in CT and FL when J (who moved in with me in 2009 after a reconciliation in part because I always remembered her birthday) and I visited her mom. And I have no recollection of what those cars are. J makes all the travel arrangements so I have minimal say on cars other than agreeing with her that cheaper is better. We had a car for the Mass Cape trip in 2017 and I remember it did just fine, and comfy, too.
I got a speeding ticket on I-85 in 2001 in a rental cube van, loaded down, with a governor on it. It was twilight though and the state trooper probably mistook me for an Audi.
Mazda CX-9 last February while in Florida. Great car. Never did figure out how to tune the radio though….
Worst rental was an el cheapo Holden Camira wagon it wasnt even roadworthy but it did the job it wasnt what Id asked for either,
Most fun was probably a play day I had in a NZ V8 Holden race car on a track they sent an instructor with you to coach you thru the more difficult turns I did one lap his way then the rest my way with the car sideways and he stopped hanging on with death grip after we didnt crash the first few times.
I used to get rental cars to get home for odd weekend breaks from one job I had and mostly they would be new Corollas or a Nissan Tiida one weekend (that was awful) but one weekend I got a rent-a-dent Hyundai Excel/Accent that little thing was a ball to drive too fast for the conditions,
I had a very low mileage BMC Mini booked for a week once it threw the harmonic balancer after 3 days but had been ok as a car AVIS replaced it with an upgrade new 78 Corolla 4 door that was very unpleasant in comparism gutless 1300cc K series engine mushy handling and it wallowed and wandered all over the road, very vague steering, how on earth did they sell so well.
One of my most memorable rental car experiences was also the last time I rented prior to the pandemic shutdown. January 2020.
It’s a road trip story that probably warrants its own CC write-up, but the gist of it (because I love the idea of this thread!! 🙂 ) was that on a whim I decided to go help out a good friend of mine who lives in Chicago but grew up in DC…and he was down in DC trying to figure out how to get some stuff out of his recently deceased step mother’s house so that the house could be sold. Never one to ignore the possibility of a good road trip, I volunteered to rent a small SUV here in Massachusetts, drive to DC and pick up my friend and his stuff, and then drive to Chicago, and then drive back home to MA from there. 2100 miles in under 4 days. I was trying to save money, and at $90/day for the vehicle – unlimited mileage – from Hertz, this was much cheaper than buying several one-way plane tickets to get to DC, then renting the car, and then home again from Chicago.
Things didn’t start out well as the Mazda CX5 I picked up in MA (at a Hertz “Local Edition” branch) only got me about a mile down the road before I noticed that it was pulling hard to the right and the steering wheel wasn’t centered. Someone had curbed it HARD apparently. So back I went to Hertz and demanded something else. After some shuffling about, I was given a Buick Encore…which was not really big enough (somewhat smaller than the Mazda) but it was the best they could do and I needed to hit the road. The Buick really wasn’t terrible, and it handled ok on the Interstate, packed to the gills…even after we got hit by a (not unexpected – January…) snow storm in Ohio on the way from DC to Chicago.
The real drama didn’t start until I was on my way – all via I-90 – from Chicago back to MA. At that point, several days into the snow storm, it really stated to kick in hard right about the time that the front windshield washer pump gave up the ghost. So, driving along a heavily salted I-90, in snow, with no ability to actually clean the windshield (each wiper stroke just smeared the windshield with a haze of salt and crap), I toggled between driving without wipers (not good) and creating a mess that I needed to pull over and manually clean before resuming driving. I limped along (not literally, but slower than I wanted or could go) from the IL/IN border all the way to Rochester like that. The not-new, and really not entirely up to the task all season tires – that all rental cars seem to come with…particularly those that come up from FL as this one apparently did — did not help either. Opting to press on because I had a place to stay in Rochester (my son goes to college there) and knew I could exchange the car.
The next morning, I went to a “real” Hertz location – at the Rochester airport – where the agent apologized profusely for my inconvenience…gave me a bunch of free rental day vouchers, and a brand new Jeep Compass. The Jeep was a class upgrade from the Buick (in all ways) and was actually a rather nice vehicle. It also was larger than the Buick…which would have been nice to have when I was actually transporting stuff from DC to Chicago. The rest of the trip was totally drama-free. Once I was in the sort of new-like-I-expect rental vehicle. Oh, and it had decent tires. Not that I needed them as there was no snow from Rochester to MA. Oh well.
I think the moral of that story (one of them at least) is to stay away if possible from the “local edition” and less than high volume rental locations if at all possible.
I also had a wintertime experience with a rental car’s washer pump that quit working.
In the early 2000s, I had a business trip to Rockford, Illinois where I flew into Chicago Midway and drove a rental car out to Rockford. Initially I was pleased that my rental was a Subaru Forester, given that I was looking at a few days of light snow. But — of course — I eventually found out the washers didn’t work.
I recall driving back to Chicago on slush-covered highways with no windshield washers… having to duck behind 18-wheelers long enough to get the windshield wet, run the wipers, and then hang back for a few minutes until the windshield became too mucky and I needed to repeat that process.
Not the most enjoyable drive I’ve ever had…
That was exactly my strategy! 🙂
Without going on too much like an infomercial, the first few times I rented Silvercar when they were not so well known practically the entire rental I was eyes-on-stalks disbelieving I was in a low-mileage Audi A4 for that small a sum. I caught myself frequently pricing CPO A4’s – which I suppose led to Audi eventually acquiring that operation.
But then there was the time I flew into Orange County in 1998 or so for a quick “See a concert in Hollywood by a band that’ll never play TX and rush back home” – that being the cheapest non -LAX option that particular weekend. I’d rented the proverbial “Chevrolet Cavalier (or similar)” for the weekend and stopped at the counter to do the thing.
“Would you like to hear our specials?”
“Sure.”
“We can get you a convertible Mustang for $xx”
I see it either raining or threatening outside the window. “Maybe not a convertible…”
We went thru a few other possibilities, but then at last
“There’s the Volvo”
Yep, for the price of a Cavalier (or similar) they plopped me into a white Volvo S70 with under 1000 miles on the odometer for the weekend. Made LA freeways a ton more tolerable…. although it had been delivered to me with seat heaters on full blast, discovered at speed on the 55 freeway with no idea at all how to turn them off.
In ’05 on a business trip to Vancouver, took a flight to Seattle and rented a medium sized car. Used an upgrade to go into a Mustang; they had just gotten 3 new deliveries an hour before. I chose a GT Convertible in yellow and was astounded to see it had 30 !! miles on it. Undoubtedly all delivery as the agent said I was it’s first renter.
Drove it for nearly 750 miles and stayed about 5 days longer because of this good fortune; almost all with the top down. Up to Whistler/Blackcomb, across on the ferry to the island, down twisty mountain roads and into back country over small bridges crossing streams filled with brook trout. Parked next to me on the ferry was an Espada and the owner and I spoke enthusiastically about each others ride.
One of the best, if not THE best rental experiences I ever have had. Great car, scenic beauty, tremendous roads to drive in an eager, well handling vehicle …..
A virtually brand new Alfa 156 1.8 saloon from Munich Airport for a work trip into Austria.
Did (an indicated) 200 km/h legally on the autobahn, and with a cloud of black smoke when I lifted off. On the return to Munich, we were tight for time, and I vowed not to be overtaken on the autobahn, and I wasn’t. Not very mature, I admit, but it’s one reason for hiring cars….
I am very late coming to this question, but here goes:
For over 35 years, I have traveled extensively for business, usually renting a car on each trip (unless the destination was somewhere like NYC, SF, or downtown Chicago). Including several vacation trips each year to see distant relatives or go places beyond a day’s drive, I ended up renting 25-30 cars per year.
–
Most of the time, I got vehicles that were not particularly memorable, typical rental car, bottom-of-the barrel fare from GM, Chrysler and later Nissan, Kia and Hyundai. But I also often got upgraded to much nicer stuff, including an M-B E-Class (twice in LA), top of the line Jeep Grand Cherokee in snow-choked Salt Lake City, various Lincolns courtesy of Hertz, a Cadillac or two, Volvo SUVs, Audi A4s, and, wayback when, a Peugeot 505 in the late ’80s in Connecticut.
Best rental experience: 2018 Volkswagen Golf in Scotland. My first time driving on the right. Desk clerk thought I was crazy for asking for a Golf versus an M-B C-Class sedan, but the Golf fit the four of us and all of our luggage perfectly. The diesel engine was perfect for the drive from Edinburgh to Inverness and points in between. Car was loaded with options not found on U.S.-market Golfs. If I could, I would buy exactly that car, only with a gasoline engine for my daily driver here.
Worst rental experience: a 2005 Hyundai Sonata in Chicago. Delivered to me dirty, dented, and driven hard over more than 50k miles. Drivers seat was so uncomfortable across my lower back, I brought it back a day later. The Chevy Malibu (one of the Maxx hatchbacks) was so much better in every respect, no matter its very awkward looks.
Most inappropriate car for the need: a Fox-body Mustang convertible in Hawaii. I met my wife there after 6 weeks in the Far East and had two large suitcases, plus her rollaway and various and sundry other. The trunk was so small that only a backpack and few small plastic bags fit there. Everything else was loaded in the back seat for a long, slow drive to our resort.
Overkill for the occasion: a 2020 Nissan Armada for a trip to NYC and environs, Thanksgiving 2019. An upgrade from the Ford Escape “or equivalent”, I grew to love the big lug and loved the way it rode and handled on city streets and accelerated with authority into gaps in traffic.
You get what you pay for: a 2004 Dodge Neon in Orlando. This was the very definition of a base model rental car, but we just needed something to get us from Disney World to our hotel and then on to Cape Canaveral and the beaches. It was the first car my elementary school-aged kids ever saw with crank windows, Rubbermaid interior and very little else in the way of comfort and convenience amenities. Since then, that trip is remembered as me being the “peon in the Neon”.
YeeHaw, rental car style: on at least two occasions, a trip to Houston netted me an F-150 4-door, which, while very useful in its own way, is not exactly the thing to drive the suits around in. In both cases, it was a one-day trip, so there was no luggage, and the wait for a sedan would have been an hour or more, so we took it and blended right in with the locals.
A concluding note: I tended to get the best cars in LA and worst ones in Chicago. Maybe the weather has something to do with it, but Chicago rentals live very hard lives, while California cars tend to be loaded, top-of-the-line versions of best-selling models, fitting in with LA’s “you are what you drive” ethos.
Rented a Fiat Punta in Skopje, Macedonia about ten years ago. They had these weird, low steel barriers to keep people from parking in certain spaces; no more than a foot and a half high. Well, off course while pulling out of an adjacent spot I crunched a rocker panel on one. The dent was only about 4″ across but it looked like hell with the barrier’s red paint in the dent. We drove the Punta down to Lake Ohrid on a wonderful mountain highway and a few more miles, crossing the border to Albania, turned around and went to Kosovo. The Punta’s five speed was a delight.
Back in Skopje I bought a can of rubbing compound for US$4, rubbed out the parking barrier paint transfer, and lucked out when an otherwise pretty careful inspector didn’t note the crunched rocker panel.
I’ve actually only had one rental car experience, as I’ve generally either driven to where I’m going, or had my own (or a family member’s) vehicle waiting for me when I arrive. That one exception was two days after Good Friday in 2000 where I set off with a friend to retrieve my Pyrochicken (a 1995 Firebird) that had been stolen two days before… making that not a particularly good. Friday. The thief made it to Tremonton, Utah from northwestern Montana, and the car had suffered some minor damage from being stopped by nail strips while passing rush hour traffic at 120mph going toward Salt Lake City. My insurance agent sorta brushed me off, so we just rented a car and headed out.
The car was a new Oldsmobile Alero in either an anonymous silver or anonymous beige- I don’t remember which. It had the 2.4l 4 cylinder, and it scooted us to our destination at up to 90mph without drama and better than I figured a 4 pot would, and returned decent fuel economy to boot. We had the back of the car loaded with tires and tools, as the police weren’t very clear what kind of damage my car sustained.
The rest of retrieval of the Pyrochicken is outside the scope of this story, but suffice it to say that it all turned out reasonably okay. I also do recommend the Alero as a rental car. Hold on… whaa??
I can only remember renting a car a couple of times, but I remember enjoying the Focus I had for about a week when my Taurus had warranty transmission work done.
I was surprised that it was as much fun to drive as it was. I was kind of bummed to get the Taurus back.
The only thing I didn’t like was the hard cheap plastic interior. It was just awful.
Awesome mpg too. I drove a ridiculous amount of miles that week and it cost like $8 to fill up (2008).
I even tried to be the “cool dad” once and drove extra zippy in the Focus around some corners to impress my boys. The Taurus was a competent car but no one would call it “zippy”, so I didn’t want to waste a chance to enjoy some corners for a change.
They were not impressed, felt carsick and I felt stupid and embarrassed.
I travel to Hawaii Island, aka Big Island, at least yearly to visit relatives, and sometimes Maui with friends that have roots there. My last Maui rental car experience almost ended like Paul’s on Kauai. I was driving a Dart in fleet white, which led to my friends landlord thinking I was the building inspector. Driving into the sun, an old pickup with invisible rear lights suddenly stopped to turn left. I barely escaped using the right shoulder.
Due to the mountains I have learned to despise CVT’s and found Ford’s dual clutch transmission actually works, just not in stop and go traffic. Last rental was a Buick Encore. The turbo four and six speed traditional automatic worked well, even climbing and descending the steep terrain, while delivering remarkable gas mileage. With more ground clearance than a sedan, I was right there with the jacked up local pickups on the more remote beach roads. Only one spot did I chicken out.
In 2009 my wife and I went to a wedding a few states away. Nothing incredible about the car (white Dodge Charger,) but I had no idea there was no radio antenna on it–they’re not whips like when we were kids and whatever what was supposed to be there wasn’t.
We realized this about 40 miles in after one CD. I stopped at a hardware store and played around with foot-long threaded rods until I found one which fit.
Antenna for the stereo should be in the rear glass.
Worst rental I ever had was a brand new 2008 E150 Toyota Corolla/Auris hatch while my 2005 Mazda 6 was being repaired after I hit a cow on an unlit road at night. The Corolla’s interior featured creaky hard plastic everywhere, the gear shift was weirdly located and quite unergonomic, the handbrake design was angled up sharply meaning it got in the way all the time (and frequently pinched my fingers upon use), the ride was poor, and the boot was pathetic. It was so bad I took it back after 3 days and hired a 2002 Ford Mondeo instead. The Mondeo’s dashboard had a lot of hard plastic and a stupid cup holder, but the ride was incredibly plush, not at the expense of the handling, and it was so comfy I didn’t want to give it back when my Mazda was ready.
We had a 2002 Mondeo 2.0 manual as a milk runabout a couple of years ago not a bad car and fast no Eroad either so it wasnt tracked, I got told to chase my truck down over the Napier-Taupo hwy, take the Mondeo was the command,I had it up around 160 kmh most of the way till I caught my DAF near Tarawera it handled great at speed not as well as my Citroen nor was it as comfortable but a good car no mistake it was a favourite amoong the drivers which made it hard to get until my swap partner got hold of it kept hiding the keys so everyone else was relegated to Commodores or the Ranger ute.That Mondeo had 420,000kms racked up and still went well it had been maintained well
I know I’m late to the party, but I just got back from a trip to my native New Hampshire today (hi John in NH). I flew up for a week to visit family and try to find something to do while folks were at work. I reserved an intermediate car, or something like a Jetta. When I arrived the guy offered me a Hyundai Venue. I told him I wasn’t interested in a crossover and he then asked if I’d consider something sporty. He had my attention and I was thinking Challenger but just as the car appeared seemingly from the mist, he asked if I’d ever driven a Miata. I hadn’t and I really wanted to. And, to top it off, it was an RF, exactly what I want. Well, this one is an automatic, but what do you expect from an airport rental?
I was thrilled and immediately put the top down. It was a beautiful 5 days with temperatures just warm enough to allow top down driving. In fact, I never drove with the top up until the day before leaving when the rains came.
I drove it to the beach with my dad, drove all over southern NH, and took it up to the famous Kancamagus Scenic Highway and thought, what the hell, and drove it up Mt. Washington (with the top open the entire time). I drove almost 1,000 miles, with all but about 10 of those miles in NH.
The car wasn’t perfect. It’s a 2020 and had 24k miles on it when I picked it up, and it was worse for the wear. It had 4 brands of tires on, the driver’s seatbelt didn’t retract right and it wouldn’t buckle unless I jammed it in hard – and sometimes not even then, the fuel door didn’t work right and was badly dented from people pushing hard on it to open, the engine was knocking and dieseling, and the infotainment system was incredibly frustrating to use and buggy. It would frequently randomly disconnect, the input method using the click wheel was inefficient and non-intuitive. It has a touch screen, but only when using it outside of CarPlay/Android Auto. I was never able to figure out how to have a text read to me despite the little message saying I could do it by tapping. Tapping what I never figured out. The volume knob would be ok in the middle but it sits too far back to reach easily while driving. And the windows would roll down a smidge and then roll back up when putting the top down, but they wouldn’t roll up when putting the top back up even if the windows were all the way up before. I’m guessing it was in a significant accident at some point based on the seatbelt issues. And finally, it is loud inside with the roof up, nearly as loud as with it down.
All in all, what a fun car to have as a rental, I couldn’t have asked for anything bette. I’m seriously considering getting one. But I certainly wouldn’t buy THAT one.
Knocking and dieseling? A 2020 model? Wow, it must’ve really been seriously abused!
Trying to upload the photo again…
Land Ark’s account of the Miata reminds me of another reportable memory. Bill and I used to go down to Tucson more or less every January to converge with friends and get some sun-and-warmth relief from Toronto winters. This always involved a rentcar, and one year I was offered a Sebring convertible. Tshure, why not! The top was already down.
We were on the highway, about halfway to the hotel when a big chunk of metal flew off (or out from under) the vehicle in front of us. Not a piece of sheetmetal, I mean something solid; I only saw it for a second or two, but I think it was an axle-and-flange assembly or something like that. It missed Bill by very few inches, turned the radio antenna into a pretzel, and put a big divot in the top of the quarter panel.
I dropped a very shaken Bill at the hotel, turned around, went back to the airport, and exchanged the convertible for a car with an actual roof. That one came with a primitive navigation system with a prim Englishwoman’s voice we immediately dubbed “Emma”. Plenty laffs over the rest of the trip as Emma would give us impossible directions (turn us onto a cul-de-sac, then order us to proceed one-point-three miles straight ahead) and scold us for ignoring her directives.
My most memorable rental was a Landrover Defender 90 in the UK in 1998. It’s still the only time I got to drive one and was great fun rumbling around Hampshire and the Isle of Wight sounding like a Routemaster bus. We also got a few laughs 10 years later while visiting family in DC when the only thing we could find to move 4 people and 4 bikes was an F150 Crew Cab.
I worked for Hertz as a transporter in ’77 and ’78; my first thought when I heard this was “are they going to provide training for the people renting?”
I realize that Tesla and other electric cars aren’t too uncommon, but would think that still many people renting have no experience with them. Probably isn’t hard, but owners learn the charging drill and where to find charging locations ahead of time, but they know they will be using the system for as long as they own the car (i.e. a reasonably long time hopefully). If you rent a Tesla frequently, you’ll also probably want to learn, but what about occasional rentals (or really infrequent rentals)? Will they get a Tesla, or be directed to rent a gasoline car?
If people aren’t going far, it probably doesn’t matter. I’d guess lots of travellers only rent for local use, and even if they don’t/can’t figure out how to charge it they’re probably OK. But there some (that paid my upkeep when I worked there 43 years ago) that rent cars one way, maybe to avoid wear/tear on their own cars…maybe they’ll be directed to renting conventional cars? If not, will there be “rescue” vehicles to give them a replacement and somehow get the car back to a place it can be charged…if so, will there be an upcharge for this service (kind of like the fueling charge is now for gasoline, but probably higher. I guess this could happen in a conventional gas car (if someone just didn’t fill it up) but probably less common, but there are always “Kramers” who either take it as a challenge to get every mile out of a tank, or a charge, or people who simply have other things on their mind (but I’d guess at some point the car itself prompts the driver to seek out a charging location before it goes completely flat…but what if they can’t get there, or just assume they can drive into rural areas that might not have charging infastructure?
My most interesting rental, well I’ve had to drive back cars that were in bad shape (stolen), or had mechanical problem (bad alternator) to our home location when I was a transporter, but I really didn’t have the job long enough to have too many stories. Lots of times I had to find a car not being familiar with the area, some Hertz locations are pretty small (remember trying to find the one in Lake Placid) though some we went to all the time, like Harold’s Gulf in Montpelier (but it was only 45 minutes from our home location, so most common though small). Sometimes we’d be up all day (doing something else) and they’d call us for a pickup, even though New England is pretty small, lots of trips weren’t in the order you’d normally expect (i.e. pick up cars in Montreal, and Boston, 2 different directions…lots of time there were more than 2 different places) and you’d be driving a long time if you ended up being the one who had to go to the “last” location, usually farthest away, maybe after being up all day already. I also remember always being asked to open the trunk of my car as I went through customs at the border, a 19 year old driving a late model Thunderbird (with no parents, alone) looks a bit odd.
In terms of my own rentals, I remember a few. One kind of reminds me of the Tesla, but instead was my only manual transmission rental, which was in the town I now live in (in the sunbelt) before I moved here, back in 1983, a Toyota Starlet. I’ve rented cars in Europe (not in Asia though, the only other place outside the US I’ve been) and all have been automatic, but also all have been since I rented the Starlet. I’ve rented in the UK, and having to drive on the other side, as well as tighter roads, (though there are also places in the US that are like that, in my experience most of them on the east coast) so I can appreciate why it is tougher to get a license there, you have to use your skills often.
One time I was travelling with my family, we rented a car in Switzerland, drove through Germany, Austria Hungary and into Slovakia. I failed to decelerate fast enough and got two different speeding tickets on the same trip (believe it or not, never have in the US, despite working for Hertz, I’m basically a slow driver). I had gotten pulled over earlier in the day, and my Father was a bit upset with me about it, we were in Hungary, crossing the border into Slovakia. We went through the normal border crossing, but we must have matched a profile (way different than when I had to open trunk on the Thunderbird going into the US from Canada working for Hertz all those years ago)..instead we had a Ford Scorpio wagon loaded to the gills (my family aren’t exactly light packers, and they were all with us) with Swiss plates. Right before that, we’d stopped at a town (I think it was Miskloc) to buy gifts (mostly liquor) for our relatives, whom we were going to visit. About 25km past the border, we were pulled over, my Father was really mad at me but I insisted I wasn’t speeding, but fortunately my Mother (who was born in the US, but both parents were Slovak, so that was her first language) understood that they wanted us to turn around and follow them back to the border. My Father eased up on me, but I made sure I drove slow as molasses back, I wasn’t about to risk a speeding ticket, and didn’t know why they wanted us to go back. It turned out they just wanted a better look at us, they asked for our passports (again) and at one point indicated that they wanted me to open up the rear hatch of the wagon so they could take a look. We got a bit nervous as we had bought a fair amount of alcohol (we don’t know our relatives well, but we did know it’s pretty common hospitality there) which we’d put there (along with many cans of diet coke, which my sisters found in the store and I think bought out what stock they had). Anyhow, on top of the luggage was my Father’s day bag, which they wanted me to open…the most interesting thing in it I can remember were packets of instant oatmeal…the border official seemed to give up, indicated that they were satisfied we were who we appeared to be (tourists with a ton of luggage) and sent us on our way. I must have asked our relatives about it, but I don’t recall what they said (it was probably in Slovak, of which I only know a few words, or they might have shrugged their shoulder). One of our relatives does speak English, but she was much in demand with this skill, and I don’t think I ever got her to find out what happened (or maybe they just didn’t know, though I doubt that). The rest of the trip went smoothly. I also remember being told to park the car inside fenced area, there are lots of gypsies in the area, and guess (at the time, maybe less so now) our car really stood out. We actually paid more to park the car in a fenced area (instead of outside the fence) than we did for our actual accommodation which was about $1 to park and $.50 for the lodging (an autocamp)..and that for 5 people in our family. We’ve since had a few relatives come to visit us in the US (including two who stayed a summer, before they married), but they never needed to drive in the US, we took them where they wanted to go (or they took the bus when they wanted to be independent).
Though Hertz still specialized in Fords back then, and we still had more of them at our location than any other make, we also had Dodges, and I worked for them in ’77 and ’78 so…yes, I drove ’78 Diplomats as well. Even recall driving the 2 door coupe (but maybe only one, they weren’t uncommon but the Sedans were more popular. The odd thing to me was that we did have Aspens but not as many as Diplomats, of course the mix of cars varied by location but would have expected that Aspens would have been more common. On the Ford side, Granadas were common, along with LTD II and Thunderbird, but there were no Mavericks nor Pintos, I would have expected more of the latter. In ’78 we had plenty of Fairmonts, but of course none in ’77. I don’t remember any Plymouths either, just Dodge and Chrysler..not sure why (maybe resale?)
I even drove a ’78 Magnum (only one) it was uncommon car even then, but it stood out, Though I knew fuel mileage was king, maybe I was in denial since that size was available since ’62, but it disappeared quickly (when the Mirada replaced it). I drove similar cars (mostly Thunderbirds, but also colonnade Grand Prix and Cutlass, strangely no smaller ’78’s) but didn’t realize how quickly they would disappear though they had been common up to then. Drove an AMC (Pacer), Toyota and Datsun (Corolla liftback and 510 (late 70’s of course)). We had some GM, mostly compacts, like Olds Omega and remember one B body, but they were’t common at our location.
Guess it helped get it out of my system, such that I’ve owned few cars myself, I got to “sample” different cars (and cars seemed more different then compared to now). The funny thing is “mundane” cars back then like the Omega and Nova are pretty uncommon now (namely RWD cars); I don’t think Hertz had a single front wheel drive car at our location..guess because other than Tornado or Eldorado they would have had to have been imported, which were still rare as rental cars. Things changed quickly just a few years later, but I stopped working for them by that point.
I hadn’t rented a car for years until 2016, when my Father and both his brothers died (his whole generation) and all of the funerals were out of town….we moved around so much and never lived in his hometown, which is where his and his youngest brother’s funerals were held (other Uncle was in a different town, 1900 miles from where we live).
The airport is so small in that area, even though it is shared with another city, most of the flights are commuter, it is hard to fly directly in (though we did for my Uncle’s funeral) that for my Father’s, we ended up flying to a nearby larger airport and renting a car. It worked out OK, though the cars we rented weren’t exactly what I’d plan for a funeral…the first one was a Jeep, which came in handy when there was a bad snowstorm after the funeral, which delayed our trip home, but still used the 4WD. The next month my Uncle died, and we had much less driving (since we flew into the nearby airport); we got a Ford Fusion, which would have been fine, but it had black wheels, which might have normally been OK, but wasn’t in keeping with something you would drive in a funeral party. The third rental (actually my last rental, though 5 years ago) was a Ford Explorer, which I really didn’t want/need since I was on my own (no other family came with me) but I had neglected to update my phone, still had a flip-phone without GPS, so I agreed to get bumped up (probably more than one) class to the lowest level they had that came with GPS service (yes, pocket took an ouch, more than doubled the rental cost)….I kind of knew the area, but it had been 35 years since I last flew into that airport and significant reconstruction (the big dig) occurred since I’d last been there, so I assumed large changes, plus my faulty memory which would have forgotten parts of the route, and of course not wanting to risk bothering my family for directions along with my admittedly luddite stance upgrading my phone to something that would have been much less expensive and continuously useful for that task thereafter. It all worked out fine, sometimes doing things too late causes you to have to spend more money. Anyhow that last rental was the only one I’ve had keyless ignition, and at the pickup spot I wasn’t able to find the (fob, or whatever you call the thing you keep in your pocket that gives proximity to the car) and although I could start the car, I didn’t want to drive off without knowing where it was, after all I was going to have to find it if I was to exit the car and not risk someone just getting in and starting it. That’s where I’d recommend the rental agencies put a holder somewhere on the dash to keep it evident, not just throw it on the seat or dash or other surface where it can slide out of view to who knows where. With concern for my family, and not knowing the roads as well as I would have liked, didn’t need more uncertainty about transportation, especially since I was paying more than I figured for that part of the trip.
Over the last 40 or so years I’ve flown over to USA from London UK many times to visit friends in New Mexico and/or San Diego and pick up bits for my ’55 Fleetwood and ’47 Indian Chief. I book rental car beforehand from a European site specifying that I want the cheapest smallest economy car as usually it’s me on my own. However as I usuallyfly into one of the airport hubs like Houston, Dallas, Phoenix I have found that on arrival at the pickup desk I’m alwys asked if I want to upgrade, at cost of course, to a larger vehicle. On replying No I’ve always been given a four door largish saloon as I guess they actually didn’t have any small cars (this is up to 2010 haven’t been over since then). Now to my best rental… in 2010 flying into Houston I was given a brand new 3.5 L high output Dodge Charger which was fabulous and looked so good in photos , like this taken in White Sands, NM.
Another reason for asking for an economy car was that I usually drove about 4000 mile round trips, so even with the low cost of petrol (as compared with UK) it still mounted up. On the 2010 trip in the Charger I went from Houston to NM(stayed 5 days with my friends), then up to the Tetons in Wyoming via Arizona and Utah, and then back to Houston via Nebraska, , Kansas , Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi , Louisiana. Quite a long drive that in just under 3 weeks.
On these trips I have taken many hundreds, maybe thousands of photos of vintage cars parked up, on the road, in junk yards etc so was very interested when I found your Curbside Classics site.,
Never really had any really bad cars not even in Mexico where I’ve also driven many times and thousands of miles and always liked getting a fairly beat up one there as they usually took a knock or two which didn’t notice.
I’ve driven fairly low slung cars round teh Monument Valley trails which can be pretty rough going, I’ve noticed most tourists preferring to take the Jeep tours , I’m sure reference has been made to the fastest car over very rough ground … a hire car !
John Low,
You have a 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood in the UK? Do you know the couple in Andover, Hants with a ’55 Fleetwood 60s?
Hi Bill,
I bought my ’55 in the ’80s in London, was running beautifully but needed body and interior work so I drove it up to Coventry about 25 years ago and it still resides there in a workshop (it’s a long story…had too many classics and not enough time to enjoy). At that time I only knew of one other 55 Fleetwood in UK which belonged to couple who also had an airstream, it was blue I recall. There’s probably a few more by now but i haven’t been going to shows etc for a long time, too many things on teh go. I was a member of teh Pre 50 club for many years and the Cad owners club from it’s start
Cheers
John,
Yes, that’s the couple I was referring to. I know them [and their cars] very well. That blue ’55 is a no-rust car with factory A/C from Texas. Had you not known them, I was prepared to put you in contact. Did you know the Brooklin model of the ’55 60s and the airstream were modeled from their car and caravan? That’s why the early version of the Airstream has the UK type of cooking gas cylinders on the front frame.
Hi Bill,
I didn’t know them, bumped into them at shows, was the lady’s name Jan or something like that ? I recall they were involved with a club,maybe Pre 50 or another more local one, I used to go to a few with various vehicles but the 60S was only taken to one at Syon Park, …. then I took it up to Coventry and forgot about it. Did you know Patrick Bowers who had a ’56 60S in the original pink ” Mountain Laurel” ? Soon after mine “was sent to Coventry,,,” a friend asked to borrow it for his wedding if it got finished in time but as not I borrowed Patrick’s and chauffeured them. Instead of going straight to reception after ceremony in SE London I drove them and a friend who had a super 8 camera all round London, him getting out and filming us driving round Buck palace, Piccadilly etc… Jap tourists taking photos of us… a grand day, shame it wasn’t in mine. I particularly wanted a ’55 Fleetwood as I was a teenager in the late ‘50s and a great Elvis fan and in mid ‘80s met a guy in the Pre 50 (I had been a member for a long time having a ’43 Willys Jeep , a ’43 HD WLC 45 and the Chief) living near me in SE London who had a ’49 fastback and 3 ‘59s, one of which was an Eldo Brougham, all needing restoration and a ’55 which had been completely restored running wise which I bought from him
Sold the Jeep a couple of years ago as like the 60S I just hadn’t used in years, still have the 2 bikes and a ’55 Citroen TA Commerciale and a ’71 DS… how about you ? what’s your classic interest ?
Cheers !
And another photo, this taken at Syon park show, Patrick’s ’56 can just been seen 2nd along from mine , can’t quite see the pink body but white roof stands out (photos digitized from old film)
John,
Yes, that’s my friend’s Cadillac, and I should point out she’s proud to tell people it’s HER car! Their names are Jen and David, and they created and operate the big “Spring vehicle meet” every Easter Monday* at the Newbury Showground. They have a rather eclectic vehicle collection, from a 1932 Essex Coach, to a 1965 Lincoln Continental 4-door drophead.
*So as not to confuse anyone, this past event’s date had been changed to September of 2021 due to Covid19 restrictions.
another photo of the Dodge
My brand new Honda Prelude was in an accident in 1987. I was given a red Chevy Corsica as a rental car. It was miserable. It kept running out of gas when the tank was full. The rental company towed it away and I was given another Corsica, green this time. That car kept breaking down as well, but in a different way. They towed that away and brought me a miserable yellow Dodge Aries. Horrible car, but at least it ran. Both cars were miserable compared to my amazing Honda Prelude. It’s no wonder that Honda thrived and GM failed in the 80’s and 90’s.