“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.
spacer
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
There’s only one answer for this if you’ve rented a car in the last decade and that’s the mirage. If you haven’t had the mirage then you haven’t had the worst.
I had one of these as a rental that I don’t 600+ miles in one day. It wasn’t that bad, and is even consider one if I needed the cheapest appliance possible to get me to work and back. Definitely not my choice if there is….anything else available though.
My worst experience was a CX-50, but it isn’t Mazda’s fault. I typically enjoy the Mazda rentals, and often choose then over other vehicles when given a choice, but at 60k miles with a plethora of dents and dings, it seemed like it had been joyridden pretty hard many times and never maintained.
Dodge Caliber. It was especially disappointing considering I’d had a string of Eclipses and Chargers for driving across Georgia to see my fiancé before being stuck in a Caliber for a week.
My now wife used to travel about 75% of the time and would always lament being given a base Altima.
Despite having rented hundreds and hundreds of cars from almost every major rental car company in the US, I have never had an absolute nightmare experience. Three disappointing ones come to mind:
1) 2016 Mazda CX-9 from Avis. I would have otherwsie liked the CX-9, but it had 74,000 miles on it, every body panel was dented or scratched, and the interior had bits falling off all over the interior. It also smelled like rotten cheese. When I complained about the condition of the car Avis gave me a 10% discount, as they had no other cars since there was a big trade show in town and they were 110% booked up.
2) 2022 Dodge Challenger SXT from Avis. Like SWG, I was kind of excited that I got a free upgrade from the boring midsize sedan I had to reserve per my company’s travel guidelines. Once I got into the car and realized how bad the visibility is, how narrow the trunk opening is, and how not particularly athletic the chassis was, I could not wait for my week with the thing to be over.
3) Chevy Malibu. All of them from 1997 and later. My last one was a couple of months ago and it was just pure disappointment. The car is fine as an appliance, but it does absolutely nothing better than its competitors and calling it an “also-ran” is demeaning to said competitors. Each time I have gotten in one over the last several decades, I am just disappointed in how poorly Chevy phoned in everything about them. I probably should have put the DCT-equipped Ford Focus in this slot, since I did have one trap me in a parking garage because the DCT couldn’t manage the speed bump right at the pay booth of the garage, but the Focus did have redeeming features. The last four (five?) generations of the Malibu do not.
I rented an early (08?) Chrysler 300 for my little brother’s wedding. I had a ’99 300M at the time at home. I loved the poise and handling of the Mercedes based car, but could not abide the interior materials. Complete downgrade from mine. They really cheaped out on the things that actually matter to customers.
So I’ve had several 300s and Chargers and they were fine, but you are absolutely right that the interiors were abysmal until the refresh in 2011/2012 (or whenever it was). Even then, the interiors were a huge upgrade but still not great.
The confusing part when I was driving that Challenger was I swear it handled worse than its 4-door siblings, but that may have been because I was expecting a sporty character it simply didn’t have.
Way back in 1990 I rented a K-car from a company that was called Wrent a Wreck, they purposefully rented crappy cars. I drove Boston to DC and back for a long weekend. The map light was in the visor and it melted from having the light on for 8 hours. The brake pads started grinding about 3 hours into the return to Boston they were pure metal on metal by the time we made it back, I was amazed at the beating that car took and kept going.
I would love to rent a car from them for shits and giggles, wish they were still around
Not really a worst car story, but I rented a Taurus in the mid 90s that was so average and forgettable that I picked the wrong Taurus in the hotel parking lot. My key opened it up, sat in, closed the door, smelled the stale smoke, saw the ashtray full of butts and realized it wasn’t my Taurus. Kicking myself now for not trying to start it out of curiosity but I was just a young kid on a business trip with my first real job.
Yah Ford had like 8 combos on the keys each year. My mom stole a explorer that looked exactly like hers. About 1/2 way home she realized it didn’t have her stuff and returned it.
A Nissan Armada that did not have headrests in the 2nd row.
Based on the vehicle itself rather than missing safety components, I would say a Chevy HHR was the one that stands out in my memory as the least enjoyable. Honorable mention would be getting a Kia Soul when I am 6’3″ and it was the rental company’s idea for a comparable vehicle to my 3 row R350.
2016 Kia Rio. Massive delays in acceleration response off the line, then another delay as the transmission had to be woken up from a coma to get the vehicle to move, then it didn’t begin to make power until it lethargically reached past 3500 rpm. On paper, performance was adequate. In practice, it was dangerously slow, unlike many older cars I owned or drove with worse performance numbers. Other than that, it got garbage mileage (23 mpg! And I get 30+ from my GR86 and my Focus ST, so I know how to drive efficiently), looked like a special needs amphibian, shook from the breeze of a medium sized bird passing by, and appeared to be built from a combination of papier mache and aluminum foil discards with an interior made from the finest quality Dollar Store plastics. Seat was also terrible, but I’m not 100% on how bad that was exactly as I was suffering from compound whiplash at the time.
a nissan versa, it overheated, then later flamed out,
in alaska,
do you know how hard it is to burst into flames in alaska?!
I got a Versa in San Francisco.
Headed up Hyde Street (that’s how you get to the top of the hill where Lombard, the famous twisty one starts). Had the pedal all the way to the mat and was doing 15 MPH.
2014 Kia Rio, I had to go to a wedding and it was the cheapest thing I could get for the hour and half drive from the airport to the wedding venue. I was trying to be cost conscious as I was a broke medical resident at the time but sheesh I should have paid the 5 extra bucks for the malibu. It was like driving a roller skate in the worst way, trucks passing by would violently shake the vehicle!
More recently, 2024 Lancia Yipsillon in Italy, wife wanted to go to the fashion outlets about an hour outside of Milan, I don’t mind driving little city cars or stick and in the city it was perfect but on the highway it was such a chore. Had to rev the nuts off the thing to stay 75ish mph so got absolutely awful gas mileage and like the rio, other cars passing or gusts of wind was enough to sway the entire thing.
Early 2000s Chevrolet Cavalier. It was a multilayer dog shit sandwich. By the time I was saddled with it, the odo read 39K miles and change. Kinda high mileage for that time. The oil light came on whenever you came to idle. I called the rental company and they said, “As long as the light goes out when you are moving, its fine.” The engine had an engine belt screech above 3300 RPMs. AC only cooled at idle. Right turns were fine, but left turns felt like the right front tire had a serious issues and might self detach. Felt like it was crab walking down the road. Never got it above 40 MPH before I made it a couple miles back to the rental office.
I told them the car was mechanically in bad shape and I didn’t have confidence it would make the trip I planned. They seemed perturbed and asked if I were a mechanic or something. I looked them right in the eye for 4 seconds, squared up and lied like a politician. “Why yes, I am a mechanic.”…as far as you know. While I’m not ASE certified, but I know my way around a car. They switched it out for some Pontiac that seemed to be less bad.
Citroen C3. I make an annual pilgrimage from NZ to the UK to see my aged parents and have to rent a car each time. I booked a Peugeot 208, which I like, but got given the Citroen at Heathrow. Fine, it’s been a long flight, just give me the damn car and let me get out of here.
Big mistake. Worst new(ish) car I have ever driven. Awful droning gutless engine, steering wheel started shaking violently at about 70MPH on the motorway (probably a tyre alignment problem), uncomfortable. I can’t remember which actual model it was, but I called it the HLS – Horrid Little Shitbox. Never again.
A local rental car company has never forced anything too awful on me, but one time, a blip in the regional rental car market itself meant I had to rental a U-Haul while my car was in the shop.
Not bad, but a little ridiculous to commute in.
Luckily it was a pickup with an 8 foot bed, but with the logos all over it, it felt like I was using work time to do home improvement projects.
That’s easy. The Geo Metro they gave me back in 2001. A gutless 3-cylinder, and seats that would make the Spanish Inquisitors shed a tear of joy (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!). I drove that miserable penalty box about two blocks before I took it straight back and demanded something, anything, else. I don’t remember what I got instead, but I know it wasn’t a Metro.
I think the maddest is was when I reserved a focus / Elantra for work trip and they gave me a sonic that thing is smaller and not the same as all and they kept arguing with me. I took it and ran it up and down the mountains at wide open throttle to keep up with traffic. In pretty sure it’s cvt was toasty when I was done.
I think the worst car I ever rented was some kind of bev bubble car in Singapore. I think it’s was called blue? I can’t remember. It was weird.
Bolloré Bluecar. They’re indescribably bad but they do have a beautiful ‘Pininfarina’ badge on the side!
Yep I had to look. Looks stupider then I remember. Terrifying they were in California I didn’t realize. People must have died. Wheelgo all over.
The worst one was a Ford Fiesta hatchback from Hertz. That poor thing was beat to hell, smoked in, alignment way off, and the Powershift automatic felt like it was on its last legs.
I’m not too worried about mechanically slightly questionable cars but I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it to my destination in that Fiesta.
A close second was a Chevy Aveo sedan that had all sorts of exhaust rattles and felt like it was going to fall apart anytime.
I once reserved a 15-passenger van for a geology field trip. Despite confirming that yes, everything was fine, on the morning of the trip only a 12-passenger van was available. There were thirteen of us. It was a mandatory field trip for the course. The trip was, in fact, the main point of the course. Rescheduling for another day wasn’t a practical option for most of us. We had no choice but to rent a second vehicle. The only thing available at the last minute was, of course, another 12-passenger van. It was at a location on the other side of town.
As a result of the delay we had to catch a later ferry to our field area. The course fee also had to be stretched pretty thin to pay for all of the expenses of the second van, including the “extra” ferry ride in both directions. Mostly, however, this all just made a long day even longer.
Yep. I rented a 7 passenger minivan for a trip to NYC two years ago. I called the local rental place daily to make sure the vehicle was available and on site for when we needed it. The clouds parted and heaven rejoiced when a Voyager presented itself upon pickup.
The brand new Nissan Sentra I got in maybe 2018 was my least favorite rental ever. It had like 300 miles on it. Somehow the suspension was both overly harsh and flabby and boatlike all at the same time, the transmission and engine were never ever doing what I needed or wanted them to be doing, and it was ugly.
I had a brand new Altima circa 2011 and it had the worst steering response and floating suspension I’ve ever experienced. It felt like everything was made of marshmallow and taffy with a huge on center dead spot. This was driving on I35 and I80 across Iowa and I was physically exhausted afterwards (something that my Fit at the time never made me feel on the same drive that I’ve done 100+ times). A literal car that was akin to driving a boat.
Yes! I couldn’t believe how much constant steering correction this brand new car required.
dodge nitro with a slipping transmission, lifter tick, and an interior with cigarette burns. couldnt get rid of that turd fast enough
1st Generation Jeep Compass, need I saw more.Well yes the steering wheel was 20 degrees off centre in a straight line and the brakes were marginal
Actually honorable mention to the W204 series Mercedes C Class I rented in the south of France. It was a lovely car except it was a manual with a foot operated E (hand) brake and no hill hold. where we were staying was on a very steep hill and it was very difficult to get the car going without rolling back.
Ford Ecosport. I hated that stupid thing. There were blindspots everywhere and the handling was god awful. I reserved a Corolla and got that “upgrade” instead.
The Autopian needs a lesson in journalistic ethics.
You ask “which is the worst rental car,” and suggestively imply an answer with the lead image.
That lead image? The greatest rental car ever, the Mitsubishi Mirage.
“The greatest rental car ever, the Mitsubishi Mirage.”
Can confirm that this is a lie.
A Mirage, even?
Last year they TRIED to give me a Tesla but I refused it. the absolute worst car I ever got was a Mazda mini-mini van. CX5 I think it was. so bad… even worse than a Purple PT Cruiser while in San Francisco. that PT was as ugly as ever, though somewhat popular for many at the time. but the large stowage space for such a small car redeemed itself when I had to bring back samples from the die run out.
Do you mean the Mazda5? The little wagon looking mini van? Because I’m genuinely curious how a CX-5 would be worse then a PT Cruiser.
yeah, Mazda5. It was over a decade ago now, so it would have been the early version. https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/mazda/5/
I had a purple PT Cruiser for a week-long visit to a very shall we say ‘conservative’ factory in the mid west. Some of the comments I got were as colourful as the car.
Getting an SUV when you need a van is brutal. As a van man, that would drive me nuts.
The worst rental I’ve had is probably the Dodge Journey I received in Hawaii. I can’t say it was awful, but it certainly isn’t a car that oozes Hawaiian vacation vibes. Luckily even the Dodge Journey can’t dull the luster of a vacation in Hawaii, in some ways Hawaii rubbed off on it I guess.
the only bonus really would be that it might qualify as a truck enough to be allowed on the roads past Hana. Cars are forbidden, Jeeps were the best option I found.
We were on the big island and didn’t need to take our car anywhere particularly tough.
Even if you aren’t though, a Wrangler is obviously what you want if you’re a tourist in Hawaii. You’re there for adventure and being immersed in the environment. It’s the perfect use case.
If you’re going to live there though, it seems Tacoma/4Runner is the default.
1995 Geo Metro four-door sedan in Barney purple. I drove it one day and took it back because I had reserved a car, not a golf cart. They exchanged it for an Oldsmobile Cultass Supreme coupe, so, win??
Malibu. Somehow, the Malibu is even more generic and soulless than even a Nissan. Though I suppose I have driven many more Malibus