As car enthusiasts, we love an opportunity to slide behind the wheel of something different. However, experiencing new cars can be hard. Unless you work in the auto industry or intentionally drive a horribly unreliable German car as a gambit to snag seat time in dealership loaner vehicles, rental fleets are likely your best chance of getting behind the wheel of new stuff.
An inarguable truth about rental car roulette is that sometimes you win and other times you don’t. For every free upgrade, there’s a neglected Nissan Altima just waiting to proclaim that it’s seen tens of thousands of hard miles.
The last actual rental car I was in was a Volkswagen Jetta, and you know what? It was great. Apple CarPlay connected instantaneously, noise on the highway was remarkably low, the seats were all-day comfortable, the trunk swallowed all our luggage, and the fuel bill was microscopic. It was objectively a great car for a whirlwind trip to Calgary, and it felt like it punched far above its weight class.
So, what was your last rental car, and how was it? Whether you were a lucky duck in a muscle car or left the airport with a pre-dented Buick Encore, we’d love to know about your latest rental car experience in the comments below.
(Photo credits: Volkswagen)
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Ram Classic 1500 – It’s a truck, does truck things, had 40k miles on it, was rattly, rode shitty, had a turning circle somewhere around two days, three if monday is a holiday, and the cursed FCA rotary gear selector.
Chrysler Pacifica – rode a little harshly compared to my sienna, which is a couch. lots of room for activities. infotainment was nice, comfort was ok, in general, aside from the aforementioned cursed dial shifter was a perfectly fine place to spend time.
Kis Sorento – I liked this one, the right mix of bottom of the barrel analog stuff with new tech. The interior space was compromised by the SUV body shape, but in general was a comfortable and decent place to spend time.
I think I’ve mentioned these in a prior TMD question. In my own travels: a ~2021 Kia Forte LXS, ~30k miles and I thought it was in surprisingly good shape for a rental and the company in question. The “IVT” was decent enough, nearly as good as a contemporary Civic 2.0/CVT combo.
Work trips have been more recent but I’ve only been a passenger in those. These have included an Expedition (nice) and a Murano. A neat thing about the Murano: there is a crease in the hoodline where it drops down toward the cowl, which was great for reflecting the Florida sun directly into the eyes of the front passengers (such as myself).
Honda Ridgeline. Fan freaking tastic. So nice I looked up prices and then lol’d and closed the tab.
Just got back from a 2 week European road trip, and we had a Citroen C5X. That thing was awesome! I have been trying to convince my wife for years that a wagon would work in place of her minivan when it comes time for the next replacement, and that car convinced her! It was comfortable even with 5 of us, it held all of our stuff for the 2 week vacation, got good enough gas mileage, not sure how good, I never tracked it. It was also happy to cruise down the autobahn at 170kph. It was a little large for some of the villages we drove through, but any smaller would not have worked for our needs. It was also the first time I have ever had a button shifter that I didn’t hate!
It looks nice, too.
I agree! If we lived in Europe I’d be looking for one now
A diesel Golf in Ireland. Worked great for the trip. No high speeds needed (maybe hit 60), possibly the easiest stick shift I’ve ever driven, and small enough that we only found one road that it was too wide to fit. In the middle of Killarney. Thanks Waze…
Rentals in Ireland turn out to be expensive. It’s one of only 2 countries (the other is Israel) where most credit cards refuse to cover the insurance so you have to pay for full coverage. I guess so many tourists damage the cars on the tiny roads that you have to cover it yourself. The golf had 2,000 miles on it and all four wheels and the mirrors were trashed…
Also a sad legacy of the Troubles. Cars used to be rented using false details and then used as shrapnel for a 5kg pack of Cemtex.
My first time in Ireland I had a Hyundai i20 as a rental. The nice person at the counter asked me if I had driven in Ireland before, and I said no. He immediately swapped keys for the i20. No idea what I was originally going to get. The passenger side of the i20 looked like it had been driven along a hedgerow for many miles. So I didn’t really worry about it that much.
A ’23 Kia Rio. It was… fine. The most memorable event was when I almost backed into a wall because, although I could see it slowly approaching through the backup camera, my lizard brain could not fully process that information without hearing beeping from the proximity sensors (which the Kia did not have).
I’ve only driven one vehicle (a 2010 Ford Flex) with proximity sensors. I think more vehicles should have those. If anything, I think “there is something behind you” is more important information to the driver than “here is what you can see out the back, but unfortunately fisheyed and difficult to judge distances accurately.”
I just came back from a family trip in San Diego where we had our choice of either a Mazda CX-50 or a Nissan Rogue. I wanted to do the Mazda because I knew it would be superior in driving experience, but it was just too small to deal with all the shit we had on this trip (two kids under 5) so we went Rogue. It was brand-spanking-new – 16 miles on the ODO. I expected the 3-cylinder CVT to be absolutely horrific but honestly it worked really well. Maybe it’s because I’m used to driving turbo vehicles at altitude but at sea-level, this 3-cylinder seemed way better than my wife’s 2022 VW Tiguan with the 4-cylinder. I had a cvt subaru back in 2013 and it absolutely sucked, but this Nissan one seemed much more refined – which is probably true until it breaks.
The Rogue’s seats are good, storage room is great and the footprint is good too. I didn’t really test out any driver assist stuff because I’m not used to it – my daily drivers are both high-end German, but they are too old for the fancy cruise and stuff.
Now I’m second-guessing getting our Tiguan last year. It’s been a bit “VW” with the electronics. Would be nice to not be on a first-name basis with my service adviser for once.
I want to say it was a 2019 Kia Optima. It drove fantastic. Very comfortable, handled really well and achieved 39 MPG on the hi-way. 10/10 would do again.
Tesla Model 3, single motor, standard range battery. I have rented a bunch of Teslas over the past couple of years, almost exclusively from Hertz at Chicago O’Hare. I’ve been pretty pleasantly surprised by them. I don’t want one of my own, but they are fantastic transportation appliances. The problem is, every single one I rent has some kind of QC issue (big surprise, right?). The last two have had some kind of problem with the window seals, so they made a ton of wind noise at highway speeds. One of them had a trunk that only opened when it felt like opening, another one had an extremely hyperactive forward collision warning system, yet another one had a charge port door that wouldn’t close. It’s always something. Also, the interiors do not seem to hold up well to rental car duty. There’s always broken bits in those damn things.
Oh, and having a Tesla in a Chicago winter is less than ideal. The range is reduced pretty significantly, and they take forever to charge. Overall though, I give the Model 3 a 7 out of 10 on my personal rental car scale.
It was 2 cars back to back a few weeks ago. I got into an accident and the rental they gave me was a 2022 Jeep Compass that I absolutely despised. Easily one of the worst cars I’ve ever driven and I owned a Sebring convertible! First chance I got I switched it for something not terrible.
The not terrible car was a 2022 Corolla hatchback and I absolutely loved it! So much so that I started pricing out the new ones while I was waiting for my car to be finished. Such a smooth and quiet engine, and even better on gas than my Elantra. I might have been swayed back to the Toyota family after driving the Corolla. Especially because it was a hatchback! I just wish I could get the hatch as a hybrid then I’d definitely put it at the top of my list.
It amazes me that they don’t sell the hatch hybrid here. They have it in Europe, and probably other parts of the world, so it exists, they just don’t sell it here for some weird reason. I am right there with you, I would jump at a corolla hybrid hatch, but nope. Toyota won’t sell me one.
It’s maddening! Thankfully we have the Corolla Cross hybrid… Ugh. I actually don’t hate the Corolla Cross but I don’t need a CUV. 42mpg is nothing to sneeze at but the Corolla hybrid with AWD gives you 48mpg. Not a humongous difference at first but for simplicities sake if you put in 10 gallons of gas every week you’ll go 60 miles further. Over a year that’s 3120 miles further on the same amount of gas.
I had a Jeep Compass from Europcar in Barcelona a few years ago. Whenever you turned it on, the screen displayed a big FIAT logo as part of the start-up procedure.
This is tangential, but you mentioned the Jeep Compass, so I must provide the link to the Regular Car Reviews review of it. Just the first 1 minute, 46 seconds. One of my favorite RCR videos ever, solely for that intro.
Hahaha. I am deceased. That intro is incredible.
A VW Polo in Pescara. A joyless wet fart of a car.
> A joyless wet fart
As opposed to a joyful one? When do those happen?
I’ve always understood “rolling coal” to be a “joyful wet fart”
Polestar 2 from Hertz at London Heathrow Airport. And it was sweeeeeet.
In the USA, I now prefer to rent Teslas because of the superior charging network. But in the UK, where there is a denser and better quality range of commercial chargers (and 230V domestic sockets which are fine for overnight top-ups) I much prefer the Polestar.
Teslas are undoubtedly the most efficient… but when did people who love cars choose cars because they are the most efficient? The Polestar just looks so much better: muscular, with stance and a cutting-edge design.
Last rental was a Highlander rented out of Halifax – with rising theft problems in Ontario and Quebec, I was one of the lucky recipients of a number shipped out east so they wouldn’t get shipped even further east (saw several Ontario-plated Highlanders that week). It was perfectly fine? I’d buy a Sienna if it were my own money, but the Highlander was comfortable, fuel economy was more or less acceptable (24mpg I believe, mixed but slightly more highway driving). Getting something with a 3rd row ended up paying off when we took some local friends out to check out a new car museum, so that everyone wasn’t crammed in beside my kid’s car seat.
Oh my lord. Ok, so, two weeks ago my wife rented a car to commute to a work conference so that she didn’t have to put the wear and tear on her car. She normally drives a PHEV and so booked a Prius Hybrid from budget. When she got to Budget to pick up the car they did not have any Piusii available and so gave her a Volvo C-40 instead. When my wife expressed concern, the attendant SWORE UP AND DOWN that this was a hybrid and that she would be fine. The C-40, dear reader, is a BEV. My wife, knowing nothing about cars and because she is running late, takes the attendant at his word, gets in the car and drives off.
After a while, she notices that the battery gauge indicates that it has only 25% charge. Which she assumes is fine because, as the attendant told her, it’s a hybrid and should also be running on gasoline.
Anyway, long story short, the car dies about an hour outside of town, stranding her. Her mom and I have to go bring her her own car and then Budget had to pay to have the car towed back to their facility (which, luckily, my wife paid for roadside assistance because otherwise I think that they would have made us pay for it). They refunded us the full amount of the rental. But it was still a pretty shitty situation that could have been avoided if the attendant had known what he was talking about (and if my wife had looked up the model of car before she left. But, honestly, there was no reason for her to NOT believe what the attendant was telling her). I also wouldn’t be surprised if Budget had it misclassified in their system as a hybrid and the attendant was just reading what their system told him.
Whoops wrong post
“Dodge Challenge or similar”
It was an Ecostang convertible and I drove it like I stole it. Honestly it was pretty fun for a long weekend on Cape Cod. On Friday I’ll be getting a “Dodge Challenger or similar” for the wife and my Asheville babymoon. I’m hoping for the best but have doubts that I’ll get a V8. The selection for rent at the Charlotte airport was pretty weak, but I see RTs that were rental cars listed for sale all the time so who knows.
I wanted to Turo a Porsche 718 but the wife wasn’t keen on the cost or the idea of essentially borrowing someone’s car. To be fair, I’m going to be much more aggressive with whatever Avis gives me than I would someone’s actual car.
Depending on how far along your wife is, you may have dodged a bullet. The Boxster/Cayman twins are known for being troublesome on the ingress/egress gymnastics for even those in good shape and no limitations.
She could have been even more irritated at you.
Cue the rental desk employee trying to convince you that a Kia Soul is similar to a Challenger.
Please don’t put that energy into the universe, thanks
> I drove it like I stole it
That’s a funny phrase. If I had stolen a car, I’d drive carefully so as not to draw the cops’ attention.
I rented a full size sedan for a road trip so I didn’t have to drive my crew cab pickup truck. When I showed up, the sedans were all gone, and they gave me a Tahoe. I was decidedly not happy, because I wanted something smaller that got better gas mileage. To appease me, they gave me a free tank of gas (they gave me one that was full, but marked it empty on their form, therefore letting me return it on fumes).
Funny thing happened, I freaking LOVED it! It was so much smoother riding than my truck, thanks to the coilover rear suspension, and when you’re used to daily driving a crew cab pickup, the short wheelbase of a Tahoe feels like you’re parking a go-kart.
It’s been a long time since I rented a car. That was a GMT-900 Tahoe.
It’s been a few years. I went with my mother to her nephew/my cousin’s funeral. Enterprise gave us an aisle to choose from, and we walked right past the unclaimed Versas and took the last Corolla on the lot. It was a very pleasant little car even in rental spec.
Edit- I rode around in a rental Expedition for a family wedding last year. It was humongous on the outside but it felt like a midsize when you got in. It seemed to have a lot of wasted space. My coach-operator uncle got tagged in a few times to park that dreadnought.
Hyundai Tucson Hybrid. I surprisingly liked driving it.
Vauxhall Corsa. Looked good, nicely finished, intuitive controls apart from the trip computer but the ride was appalling (and I’ve happily driven cars with underslung chassis so my bar is low if you’ll pardon the pun). My teeth hurt at the end of the journey. Dual zone temperature controls operating a single zone annoyed the hell out of me but my wife suggested that if sticking to a single control configuration for both systems enables the bean counters to sanction physical controls rather than putting the controls on the touch screen I should shut up.
Kia K5, base FWD auto, enough miles to show some wear but not be extremely clapped out. Was perfectly fine as a rental, boring, but *allegedly* would one wheel peel on turns if the gas was mashed from a dig… allegedly
Toyota Sienna Hybrid / Drove through Utah visiting the national parks. Great room, great gas mileage, easy to park. Not a minivan man but it sure hit all the boxes for four adults and 2 weeks worth of supplies and travel gear.
Also, Volvo S60 / Nice commuter sedan. Smart looking, decent gas mileage. Some buttons/switches and how to operate certain things within the car were a bit above my head and not as intuitive as I would have liked.
Hyundai Kona rented out of STL. I flew into STL and drove 200 miles to my destination, which was cheaper and faster than flying into the small regional airport in Owensboro, KY.
The Kona was… adequate for the task. The big surprise was that it got 40mpg over an admittedly flat interstate route. I didn’t need to refill the tank until just before I returned it.
2023 Corolla. Worked fine.
Only thing I didn’t like was the road sign detection showing the speed limit. I turn that off on my GPS, too.
Don’t give me scienter!
Every once in a while, my local Enterprise branch surprises me with something. Usually it’s a bad something, like giving me a Chevy Spark for a three-day road trip in mid-Canadian winter. Every once in a while, though, I get lucky and I get something at least mildly fun. The last one was a Mercedes GLA250. More fun to drive than I expected (and much too easy to speed in), and my son was greatly entertained by regularly changing the colour scheme of the LED accent lights. He was also greatly disturbed by me accidentally calling them ‘sex lights’. Is that term a remnant from my ’80s childhood, or does anyone else call them that?
Jeep Grand Cherokee in Las Vegas. What a steaming pile of feces. Well, kind of. It was big and comfortable and the interior was nice but everything mechanical or electrical was utter garbage. The engine would crank and fail to start at least twice a day. Like, crank for 5-10 seconds straight and then just give up. The power liftgate was about as reliable as a geriatric erection. What the 6 cylinder engine lacked in power it made up for with surprisingly shitty gas mileage. The infotainment system was the worst I’ve ever used. About half of the time we tried to use the navigation it couldn’t find the address or poi we were looking for. But, we had phones so no big whoop. The funniest thing to me was how after reversing, the back up camera would stay on for about a quarter mile.