Many of us have been there: Booked a holiday or a flight, and reserved a hire car to collect at the airport. Sometimes, if you’re brave or optimistic, you specify a particular model, hoping that the agent will make sure the Hyundais are given to others and you can have a Curbivore-approved choice. Maybe you’re a member of the hire company loyalty programme so you feel properly treated and can request an upgrade, or not, as the capability of car hire companies to mess up, or give you a Jeep Renegade, whilst believing they are going further than expected is immense, in my experience.
But, how often have you been disappointed by the car Avis or Hertz come up with? But, good news, we’ve found a way round this, as demonstrated by a group of Australians we met in south west France earlier this summer. We went to the market to buy truly fresh fruit, garlic, saucisson and a baguette, and encountered several Austi-Healey 3000 and 100/6 in the adjacent parking area.
Simply, choose your preferred car (perhaps your classic Austin Healey 100/6?) and join forces with five friends looking also to travel to Europe.
Load all six cars into a shipping container and put it on a ship to Felixstowe, the major container port in eastern England.
Six weeks later, fly to the UK and collect your cars, and head off on your holiday. As the insurance advertisements say “Simples!”
In this case, it was a drive in the Alsace on the France – Germany border to join a European Healey Meeting for a week of classic Big Healey driving in the Rhineland, with wine tastings, biergartens and the remarkable Schlumpf Collection included.
The trip continued with a tour through France to the Mediterranean and then back to the UK, before the cars were shipped back to Australia.
There may be a couple of downsides to this plan – the cost may exceed Avis, there’s going to be a lot paperwork and people will keep stopping you in French markets asking “Are those your Austin Healeys?” (sorry but it had to be done and you don’t hear many Australian accents in Lot et Garonne) but as a way of getting a winter sun holiday with your classic it would take some beating.
The cars themselves were a wonderful cross section of big Healeys, including the original 100/6 and 3000.
The green 100/6 really caught my eye, along with the 3000 with the fixed head.
But my favourite was the 3000 Mk2 in BMC rally red with a white roof and a convincing period road rally look. A very attractive, well presented car, and truly a holiday highlight.
Better than Avis? You bet.
I like the kangaroo sticker…just in case someone asked if you were from Austria!!!
I see the joke about having no kangaroos in Austria every time I visit Salzburg and other towns in Austria…
Once, I signed for Austria to a deaf American who had never seen this sign so he asked me what that sign meant. I spelt it out A-U-S-T-R, then he interrupted, “OH, a new sign for Australia! Look! New sign for Australia!” Gee…
Brilliant! What a splendid holiday. Thanks for showing us all those luscious Healeys.
I’m going to take a wild ass guess and say that this solution just might be substantially more expensive than renting a car.
But probably more manageable than renting an Austin Healey 3000….
erm… depends where you’re holidaying:
http://www.caledonianclassics.co.uk/cars/austinhealey-3000-MKIII/
(man I love living in Scotland)
Maybe he got a volume discount?
Great idea, but I have to agree with Paul – very expensive.
And good luck getting one of the Healeys fixed if a major breakdown occurs.
I actually think they would be pretty well taken care of if it happened during the Austin Healey rally, lots of expertise on site and plenty of local contacts. The cars are really quite simple, and have very good parts availability. At worst you might have to rearrange your schedule, or arrange a tow truck and a real hire car.
I saw a 1930s Bentley in Scotland with Australian plates. The owner presumably wasn’t short of a bob or two.
I also seem to recall a classic car rental place in Scotland which did airport pickups and offered big Healeys, among other vehicles.
Like Roger, I encountered a group of folks touring another continent with their personal vehicles (In my case, a group of Europeans rolling through Page, Arizona), so it may more popular than we think.
Another option is cruising the Big Island of Hawaii with fellow car enthusiasts:
https://hawaiiclassiccruisers.com/
This link was for the cruise from earlier in 2018, but the local enthusiasts sponsor an island cruise every three years. I heard about it during a trip to the island this summer, and am considering it for my bucket list.
A quick check on the internet says shipping is a mere $960 (one way and from the west coast), and there’s regularly scheduled service using RORO (Roll On, Roll Off) ships.
Here in the western US it’s not uncommon to see round-the-world explorers in rigs that have never been sold in the US. Usually from Germany. Just this morning a few blocks from my house, I saw a German-plated Toyota Land Cruiser 70 with a large camper mounted up.
But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen foreign sports cars here, though to be honest I don’t think a Healey 100 or 3000 is well-suited for our roads anymore. I suspect Continental roads have fewer potholes than ours, and my perception is that those big Healeys don’t have much ground clearance.
I can never get used to the use of the word hire in respect to the temporary use of a car. To this American you hire a person or company to do a job while you rent things that aren’t people.
You would rent a backhoe to dig a ditch yourself while you would hire a company to dig the ditch for for you.
Love seeing those Healeys! The only time I’ve hired a car and was dissatisfied with it, was getting a Mitsu Lancer from Enterprise, and one of the wheels fell off it when I was leaving the parking lot. (Apparently it was already missing several of the lug nuts on that wheel, and the rest worked their way off.) Thank goodness I hadn’t made it to the freeway before this happened…
This looks like fun. Every once in a while I run across someone from Europe driving an interesting car that isn’t sold in the U.S. I wonder if Americans ever ship over an American car to drive around Europe, a Cadillac, ‘Vette, Camaro or something like that.
I have seen a Ram 2500 pickup with a camper mounted and looking completely out of place in an ancient Scottish village. Ohio plates IIRC.
Other than that, any American registered vehicles I’ve seen were ones I came across regularly and presumably were owned by Americans working there. Maybe it’s more common on the continent, where LHD isn’t an inconvenience. You will see Corvettes etc but they’re locally registered personal imports.
Back in 1971, Dad had our Fiat 125S shipped from New Guinea to the UK, then drove it across Europe to the then Yugoslavia and back to the UK. Right hand drive, on New Guinea number plates. The car is lone gone, but I still have the plates.
The somewhat blurry pic show Dad driving it onto the cross channel hovercraft.
I sometimes fantasise about returning my Skylark to the place of it’s birth, and touring the USA in it. I think I’ll stick to rentals though.
That’s one great trip!
The only way to salvage a disappointing rental (like the Pontiac “Le Mans” I got once in 1990) is to get the damage insurance and then massively hoon it. Top speed trials, redline neutral to drive gear drops and finding out how fast it will go in reverse is always entertaining.