“Beggars can’t be choosers,” they say, and they say it’s because it’s generally pretty true. It’s extra-definitely true when you’re the last person to make it to the rental car counter after arriving in town for the big convention or whatever, and you simply must make it to the hotel/meeting/booth/inlaws’ house when you said you would. Oh, you signed up for a nicer-quality midsizer? Well, looks like you’re settling for whatever’s left on the Frugal Humiliator list. “Yes, I’ll take it, sighhhhhhhh.”
The Bishop inspired today’s Autopian Asks after telling the tale of how he wound up with a Plasma Purple (yes, that’s the actual name) Mitsubishi Mirage. Now, I think this is a good color, and I would happily tool around in that little cheapster while I waited for my daily to get back from the collision center. But poor Bish was in town to shuttle important clients around, so, yeah – not the greatest pick. “At least it didn’t look like we were a wasteful company,” said The Bishop, looking on the side of things as bright as the Mitsu’s paint.
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Wrencher extraordinaire Stephen Walter Gossin chimed in with this tale. “Don’t meet your heroes,” they say, and well…
I was in Phoenix for a conference in 2013 and was provided a rental to get to the event, to the hotel and back to the airport. Enterprise said I could pick anything I wanted that they had on the lot per the reservation type, so I figured that it was time to finally meet my hero. I had been enamored by the Dodge Challenger since it showed up in 2008 and this was going to be my first chance to drive one and to experience its majesty and badassery. I was wicked, wicked pumped. I was given a V6 Challenger and had to do my best throughout the rest of that week to hide my disappointment that it was just another V6 LX chassis offering, not too dissimilar from the Charger and 300. It was fine, it looked good, and drove great, but there was nothing special there. My “future dream” attempt of saving up $30K for one ceased funding that week.
And this next rental escapade comes from Griffin Rilely, freshly returned from Colombia, where he was much more in love with the cars there than he was this gem:
This past December, my mom moved to Houston and we decided to make it a long family road trip across the country. We put in the order to rent a van, and the day we were heading out, we got a call from the rental service that “we actually don’t have a van for you, but we have something of comparable size.” What we had was a Cadillac XT6, a simple three-row SUV, nowhere near enough room for two cats and four people who packed up their whole lives to move thousands of miles away. We also got a nail in a tire at one point, called customer service who told us there was a big SUV in a town 100 miles away (out of the way mind you), and when we pulled up, local rental representative said they had no such request for a vehicle transfer and only had four door sedans for us. Shitty couple of days driving that thing.
Your turn: What’s The Worst Car A Rental Company Has Forced Upon You?
Top graphic image: Mitsubishi
Mid 2000s, family trip to visit the Grand Canyon. We flew into Vegas and rented a Ford Crown Vic class car to drive to Flagstaff. Because my dad had max status with Hertz, we got a free upgrade to the next class, (SUV). This proved to be mistake. We got a shiny new Ford Explorer. Key word is shiny, the interior had much chrome in it, we were getting blinded in every direction by the desert sun beating in, we resorted to cutting out pieces of paper to cover some of the chrome. On top of it, the beast was thirsty, resulting in far more fuel stops than anticipated at those expensive middle of desert fuel stations. We were really disappointed and decided the next time we would insist on a sedan. The following vacation was to Charleston, the rental was far better, a Jag S type.
Let’s see…
Back in the early 90s, a holiday rental of a then-current EA Ford Falcon. It proved to have no discernable damping, steering with about a foot of slop, and when wet weather arrived I discovered it had minimal grip through the god-knows-what tyres that had been fitted. When I turned the wipers on, one of the blades immediately launched itself into the roadside shrubbery. A ghastly shitbox I was happy to say goodbye to.
In the early 00s I rented a first-gen Kia Sportage on the Samoan island of Savai’i. I’ll cut it some slack given the location and minimal cost, but it regularly failed to start. When I called the rental company they instructed me to grab the roof gutter and rock the car from side to side a few times then try again. And yes – when I did that it’d fire right up. No idea why.
In 2019 I hired a Yamaha road/trail bike to ride from Hanoi to a town a few hours away. I discovered the key and ignition barrel would work themselves loose and abandon ship as I rode along, while the engine kept running. The rear plate also felt the need to escape. It departed in the main street of a village I rode through, and was never seen again (I doubt it belonged to that bike anyway). Still, compared to most two-wheelers you see on Vietnamese country roads the Yam was a good thing, and I’ll admit to being quite fond of it by the time I handed it back.
Adequate but disappointing rentals – a second-gen Prius that was just an underwhelming thing to get about in (especially compared with the surprisingly-good Chevy Cruze I’d had a few days earlier), and a diesel Citroen C3 Aircross that got me from A to B without ever being even remotely enjoyable to drive.