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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Exactly what I asked for. A Chrysler Pacifica. Took my daughter’s e-sports team to a tournament in Manhattan (KS, the LITTLE Apple). It did a Van’s work without complaint. Hauled 5 young adults and one old fart in comfort.
A white Kia Sorento in the Canadian Rockies. I hated everything about it but especially the cruise control. Trying to drive down the Icefields Parkway in that thing felt like the car was gonna launch itself into the first elk it saw. The engine braking was nonexistent so downhill it would never downshift and just go into free-wheel and just keep gaining speed until I forced a downshift. Horrible car to drive but the scenery more than made up for it.
And I drive a Crosstrek at home so it’s not like I had high expectations
’21 Toyota Camry that I was given by the insurance company while my Bolt was repaired. Good mileage, but it puts the “slush” in “slushbox”. Hated driving it. Sits too low, had to buy gas (I normally charge for free at work), a switchblade key that was determined to open in my pocket for a home vasectomy, the “air freshener” they douse them in gave my wife an asthma attack, and it just wasn’t MY car.
To paraphrase Men on Film: “Hated it.”
Over the weekend I rented a 10X10 U-Haul to take stuff across the state to my daughter. While driving through Denver I was getting stressed by cars flying by me on both sides but I kept myself calm by pretending I was Daniel Ricciardo.
A Mustang convertible in Florida…..even in late October it was too hot and humid to drive with the top down. Adding to the misery, I lost the keys in the sand at the beach and it cost $300 to get a new one. 10 minutes later we found the keys on the beach where we had been sitting……and yes we had looked there before.
Nissan Versa 6 years ago for a trip from North Platte, NE to Dallas, TX. They had a white or maroon and chose the white. As soon as I got to the lot I saw the Colorado plates. Went back in and told them I like the maroon one better (w/ Missouri plates). Just didn’t feel like bombing through plains states with green tags.
The ride was meh. But halfway into Oklahoma I realized it had an armrest. Best feature in that car!
My last rental was a base model prius. While i stared longingly at the Shelby GTs, i was reminded we could only pick from row G. So we nabbed the newest car there- a 2023 prius with 900 miles.
I hate to say- i liked it. I liked that it was a hatchback. I liked the full electric mode. I loved that we drove from phoenix, to tucson, to sedona, to flagstaff, to phoenix and used 46 dollars of fuel.
I have to say, after that experience I would buy one as a daily runabout.
Toyoya RAV4 Hybrid XLE (not the Prime) with 302 miles on it. Still great by rental car standards, but I liked it less than I expected. Power and efficiency (39 mpg in mixed driving) were good, but refinement and interior materials lag CR-V and the aging CX-5. And rear seat comfort was way behind CR-V.
I got a base model Camry. It still had a physical key that you had to turn to start the car. And then Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Bought a car about 3 hours away, and had the challenge of how to get it home. So I rented a car locally, drove 3 hours to where my new to me car was, dropped the rental at the airport, and met the seller there.
Any way, a Chevy Trax with about 60K miles on it. It was …competent. That’s about the most I can say about it. CarPlay worked and it got me there, which is really all I was asking of it. But very forgettable, I have no memory of what the interior looked like, even though this was only a couple of months ago.
Ford Edge. The infotainment screen would lock up from time to time. Other than that it was a car and did car things.
My last rental was BMW 5 series that I just asked about. Turns out it was just sitting on the lot so they rented it to me for the same cost of lower tier I had reserved.
It was a fun car and a blast to drive. I just don’t want the wallet draining exercise of owning one.
We lucked into a BMW 530e for the Lemons Rally by just like, being patient and nice. I’d reserved a luxury-class rental out of LAX for the Lemons Rally, but all Enterprise had in stock in that class were convertibles. This was the Route 66 Rally and my codriver was already like, not prepared for LA to be cooler than expected, haha. So, I was like, wellllllll…do you have anything with a fixed roof? We were aiming for a BMW 3er, Audi A4 or similar vehicle. The attendant looked around, then pops down to a lower level then offers a 5 Series. Normally, it’d be an upgrade, but he wanted to do us a solid for being patient with the thin inventory. Hell yeah.
So, we waited for a w h i l e as they washed off this hybrid 5er, and the attendant kept apologizing every time he walked by. Then he brought it up, and…it kept dinging that the key was in the car, but not found. Where was the key? Oh gosh, they might’ve lot the key. The attendant was like, oh no. Ohhhhh no. He went back downstairs a couple times to make sure it wasn’t left on the lower deck while we continued opening and taking apart every random bin and such in the car. Finally, I suspected the key might’ve slid off the center console between the seats, and bingo: this big ol’ BMW key fell in between the passenger seat in the console, and my teeny hands were to the rescue. He threw on an extra discount onto our already discounted Costco Travel reservation price for our trouble.
Moral of the story: be nice to the service staff! I suspect this guy has to deal with impatient goofs all the time and it’s refreshing just to have folks who are just like, polite and willing to roll with whatever happens.
Anyway, this car ruled. Absolutely perfect for that trip. It’d go [redacted] mph all day with well over 30 MPG, even though we didn’t find anywhere to charge it on the whole trip. Ample luggage space for whatever dumb crap we brought en route. Handled well on fun mountain roads. Comfortable. Decently optioned. Usable controls. Left some rubber on an abandoned drag strip. It even automatically swapped to a lower-emissions mode when it got closer to central LA, which was kinda neat? I like breathing! Smog bad. Also, NORMAL GRILLE!
The only complaints I had were with the cupholders and the pedal feel. The cupholders had a death grip on my beverages, which made it easy to accidentally press the drive mode buttons when I just wanted to put caffeine in my face-hole, not in my lap. Like, guys—this is a comfortable autobahn cruiser, not a Jeep. We’re going to bounce around that much. The brake pedal feel—like, how hard it bit on the brakes or how mushy it felt—was pretty inconsistent, which I suspect was from the regenerative braking system doing different things based on how it was driving.
It did have the usual rental rash: curbed wheels, a weird dent on the roof, and paint that’d been swirled to heck, which made taking off the absolute buttload of painter’s tape we used to theme the car…interesting. I’m, uh, glad I took the day after off, LOL. We left one of the googly eyes that another team stuck on the roundel up front as a weird little Easter egg for the Enterprise staff in Austin. Still, the paint could’ve been worse—the other Rental Car Class team that added taped-on theme bits found out that their rental Mustang had been previously repainted in a spot when some of said paint came up with the tape. Oops!
Here’s our class-winning (!) theme job, in case anyone’s curious: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4veGeurQlC/
We had a giant version of our tiny tool mascot (as Team Huge Tools), “Starry Night,” sort of, but with the butt emoji as the moon, a couple very big lemons, a Spirit of Ecstasy statue on a camera mount that we’d rigged to light up with a multicolor LED underneath (notably banned in the EU, but this is ‘murica), and a completely wholesome URL across the back bumper.
I had a Chevy Malibu a few weeks ago in Texas. Beside the fact that I thought pickups were legally mandated and I thought the Malibu had been dead for years, it was totally fine. Comfortable on the 90-mph freeways and easy to drive.
Our last rental, in September-October of 2021 (after my wife ran over a giant tree during a huge storm in our Cruze, while it was being repaired because it actually was fine structurally) was a 2020 Altima. It was free through insurance.
It had a myriad of “No smoking” stickers, so obviously it smelled considerably of nicotine. The infotainment was horribly slow. The CVT seemed to be programmed solely to induce four-cylinder groan/drone at any throttle position. It made questionable noises and handling was not ideal. The seats were comfortable enough, but nothing to write home about.
So, in other words: It was a Nissan Altima.
From what I hear, they only really come alive when you’re darting in and out of freeway traffic and jumping 4 lanes at once to get on an offramp at the last minute
I don’t remember. Not sure if that’s good or bad.
Last one was a Nissan Sentra in Vancouver last summer. I’m English and had never driven a Sentra. Disturbingly, it was probably the nicest car I had driven in years. Literally everything I could possibly need. I didn’t even mind the CVT as it meant I could give more attention to drinking on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. But then, probably the best rentals I had have been bottom of the range Dacias in Morocco, Turkey and Romania. The perfect tin cans for doing what you need them to do and no more.
The first car I hired was a Smart. Loved it. Bought one. Then a few years later I was upgraded about three grades to a Peugeot 508. Loved it. Bought one. Haven’t felt the need to buy a Sentra though (if I could even got one to the UK).
Drinking on the wrong side of the road sounds like something that could use all the attention it can get
Ha. Bloomin’ autocorrect. But of course, an automatic does leave a hand free for that bottle of Fanta. Suddenly and unexpectedly having to change gear while taking a sip is not ideal.
“Fanta”
I mean, it would be a cup of tea but I find the saucers don’t tend to fit in the cupholders
A recent Malibu whose collision avoidance equipment brought a couple of surprises:
What’s the story behind your username? A leaky convertible?
It was GMC Terrain. And it perfectly acceptable as an appliance vehicle, which is typically what you want with a rental car. I have rented a Mustang convertible, but that was for a fun car for a leisure trip, not something to get me to the meeting on time.
Every time I go to the Bay Area/Northern CA, I use SIXT at SFO. I always reserve something inexpensive, then they offer me upgrades at the counter. I don’t know how they stay in business, because I recently got a Z4 for something like an extra $40/day. Worth every penny. Went out of my way on a drive from Sonoma down to Palo Alto, and took Skyline Blvd. I will only rent from them.
Had a Pacifica PHEV for about a week and a half a couple years ago. Loved that I hardly used any gas, but the gas engine did not sound healthy despite only have 10k miles.
Overall, I was happy to return back to driving our Odyssey. It just felt so much much sturdier and the interior materials felt higher quality compared to the Pacifica.
But it did leave me wanting Honda to offer a PHEV Odyssey.
My last rental was on a 2017 Las Vegas trip. My friend and I spent a few nights in town, but didn’t bother with a car until our last day. I wanted to visit Hoover Dam and cruise around, so I figured renting a car between hotel check-out in the morning and our evening flight out would be ideal. I had visions of a convertible Mustang or Camaro. I jumped onto a few sites the night before and found both from Hertz, but then on a whim, I VPNed home to Canada, checked the Canadian Hertz site and discovered some way better deals. I ended up booking a 2016 Mercedes SLK 300 roadster and had an absolute blast. That 2 litre was a little torque monster and only sipped on premium even when I had my foot down a lot. My friend had to ride with my camera bag between his feet, since his giant suitcase used most of the trunk, but hey that was his problem!
Our was a new Ram Ecodiesel. It was pretty fancy and even had the weird split tailgate, but I didn’t love it because even though it was a Lariat, it felt, well………………sort of cheap.
Isn’t Lariat a ford thing?
Rental spec Chrysler Voyager. Heated cloth seats. Wireless CarPlay. Stow n snow seats.
I would have preferred a Sienna but couldn’t complain.
2022 Ford Escape, in Las Vegas, and it was awful. Thrashy, full of nannies, uncomfortable ride, and the most annoying “gearshift” I’ve ever had the displeasure of using. It’s a rotary dial.
Imagine you miss a turn, but there’s an opening in the boulevard up ahead, so you figure you can just flip a bitch and go back and make the turn. Then imagine the dumbass rental car has the turning circle of a container ship, so you can’t do it in one go. You discover this just as the light changes a block away, so now you’re blocking traffic trying to make a U-turn. You reach for a shift lever that isn’t there, remember the stupid dial, then overshoot Reverse and put the fucking thing in Park. Then you overshoot Reverse again, and end up in Neutral. By the time you get straightened out and pointed the right direction, you’ve been honked at three times, and are embarrassed as hell. You make loud verbal defamations about the character of certain Ford engineer’s mothers, and try to flee the scene quickly – but by then the light at the next block has changed, and you have to sit there through a red light cycle with all the people you’ve just blocked.
Lesson learned: Never, ever, ever rent another car that doesn’t just have a goddamn normal shift lever.
….how much of that is “the car is bad” vs. “I had too-high expectations for turn radius, and little or no experience with dial gearshifts”?
Both the turning radius and gearshift feel like things that would just need more time to learn…which you don’t get with a rental. Same with gearshift–a rotary one would be new to me as well, but I understand why they’re used if they take up the smallest dash space possible. But I wouldn’t want to be in a “pressured K-turn” situation with one without practice, either.