“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
An informal review of the posts seem to indicate these are the biggest turds.
Honorable mentions go to:
The biggest box truck they had. We needed a third seat for our baby seat and the truck to tow home the broken VW bus on a tow dolly and the only truck with a third seat was their largest. A giant EMPTY truck.
2022? Ford Ecosport (the little one, non turbo) at the Philly airport. We’d flown back to go visit family/friends in Willlw grove (down 95, around and up 476, then a few miles on 276/PA turnpike. The SOB would accelerate fine to cruising speed but once there, refused to downshift/significantly retarded spark after slowing down so each time traffic dropped below 40 or so, esp if it went to a stop, I absolutely could not accelerate back up to speed.
After 20 minutes of honking and fingers (the only way to get it to behave was to pull over, stop, place in park, and restart. Not fun with folks blowing by at 75mph.
I discovered if I didn’t slow below 40 it was fine, so I pulled a yellow-plate abc threw on the hazards and each slowdown I’d just pop into the breakdown lane and haul along at 45 or so, drawing even more honking and fingers.
I was able to trade for one that wasn’t broken and it was only marginally better for Philly traffic.
We had a Nissan Versa sedan in 2109 as a rental after my wife had totaled her car. Drove it for a few weeks until we got things settled with insurance and could get a replacement. I have pretty low standards and even lower expectations but that was the only car I ever walked away from thinking how could anyone buy one of these of their own free will. It was horrible in every way, from the proportionally too tall for it’s width styling to the CVT that somehow kept the engine in the drone zone but not in a useable powerband.
What makes it the worst is that we were driving that thing from dealer to dealer while shopping for a new car. Getting out of the Versa mean everything other new car we drove seemed amazing. This led to the Jeep Compass now in our driveway.
Both worse and best maybe? My only choice for a rental one time was a 1970s Ford F-100 manual with holes in the floorboard in Aniak, Alaska. You don’t need to go above 25mph there anyway.
I’m torn between the ’23 Charger I had last week in Hawaii and an early teens (Gen 5) Camaro in SoCal. The Camaro had terrible outward visibility. The Charger was a little better in that regard, but just an unfun car to drive overall.
Oh my god, it’s a (Purple) mirage. I’m telling y’all, it’s (pronounced) sabotage!
I’ve driven plenty of rental turds, but only the 2022 Kia Niro EV tried to murder me. The Niro decided that when an entrance ramp joins the highway and the right lane’s right-hand stripe disappears, the car should rapidly veer right in search of a lane stripe. It took two of these terrifying events for me to realize “lane keeping assist” was the culprit, which prepared me to survive several more “lane keeping” events before I could get off the highway, stop the car, and turn it off on the touch screen menu.
Then, while trying to parallel park on a busy street, the car engaged automatic breaking whenever a car passed by in a travel lane. The first time I nearly had a heart attack at the jolt, imagining I’d bumped another car, but no, it was just another helpful driver assist.
I’ve driven other cars with similar driver assist features that ranged from slightly helpful to mildly annoying, but none have been outright dangerous like that Niro.
It WAS a bright red Chevy HHR. On top of it being a terrible car, I hid my face getting in and out with the fear that someone might think I actually chose that car to be mine—like I owned it.
But last month I went to Providenciales and reserved a “Nissan Altima or similar full size car”. What I got was a kicked to the curb Honda Fit that was about 8 years old with 60k miles (That’s a lot for this little 20 mile island). I didn’t even bother marking the existing damage because the whole car was existing damage. The headlights were yellow and hazy. The hubcaps were broken, mismatched and all were held on with tons of zip ties. It was filthy inside and out. The roof under the rear hatch was rusted and all four corners of the bumpers were damaged. It looked like they washed it 4 years ago with SOS pads. While driving at night I sprayed the windshield. Big mistake. I assume—never getting cold there so they don’t need wiper fluid—that someone filled the reservoir from a dirty puddle using their shoe. It was impossible to see out the windshield, the wipers must have been original and the local drivers either drive with high beams on or no lights at all. The car shimmied like crazy. The radio didn’t work but the AC did. The GPS screen was in Japanese? And the map did not correspond to anywhere on the planet that was near me and the icon representing the car didn’t move when I drove.
Where on the planet did you find a rental Honda in that bad of shape?
Oh wow there have been so many.
I think the record for the worst is still held by one of my first rental cars, a 2000 Mitsubishi Montero Sport. The worst part about it was the terminally-stupid automatic transmission that took I swear took two full seconds to downshift as I was flooring it trying to merge onto a freeway in Dallas. Aside from that it would have been okay in any other setting. But driving around Dallas involves lots of U-turns and the Montero Sport had a turning radius to rival USS Wisconsin. Felt like about the same power-to-weight ratio, too.
Then there was the 2018 Mirage, which prompted me to write a rambling, rather over-the-top review on r/cars, which I later reposted here.
For awhile there when I was travelling for work a lot, I would purposely try to rent the most basic tin can I could just so I could compare their respective terribleness. The Mirage, Yaris, Mazda2, Cavalier, Trax, Rogue and Versa all earned my ire at one point or another.
High points in my rental history include lucking my way into an upgrade to an Infiniti QX80 and another lucky grab which saw me spend 2 weeks and 1400 miles behind the wheel of a 2017 Charger R/T.
Can I interest you in a 2011 Mitsubishi Galant?
I had a fairly recent (5 years ago??) Rogue that stopped all by itself in a Boston suburb with zero vehicles or obstructions around me. At the time I thought “WTF was that about?”
Dodge Caravan ca.2008. My family rented this turd on a road trip from SF to Portland, OR. We had a Pontiac Montana at home, which, though flawed (GM interior FTL), was torquey, drove well, and was a competent road tripper. The Caravan was none of those things. Interior was Daimler-Disaster-era cheap, engine was buzzy and coarse, but by far the worst thing was the transmission. The gear spacing was just bizarre, and heading up through the mountains it was unbearable. 4th gear was too tall to accelerate much at all, so passing trucks meant asking it to shift down the 3rd. SLAM. Every shift was like getting rear-ended and the 4-3 downshift was meant the engine was constantly shuddering between limping along at 1500 or screaming away at 4500+rpm. There was no in-between. And the transmission got confused easily too. If you hated the 4-3 shift, wait til the tranny couldn’t figure out what to do and served up a sledgehammer of a 4-2 shift. Pretty sure I banged it off the rev limiter a couple of times heading up through Redwood National Forest.
Utter trash.
Tie between a Chevy Cavalier, and a Chevy Spark. The Spark might have been ok for one person but no way for 4. The Cavalier was just terrible in every way, wish I’d rented a bicycle instead.
Oooh this is a toss up between the mustard yellow 3 door Hyundai Getz and the automatic Daihatsu Sirion that was supposed to be a manual when I booked it. The Getz was awful because we drove it from Brisbane to the Gold Coast and it was scary. The Daihatsu was just dull – I had rented a manual in the past and it was fun cos you could drive it to the absolute limit and never break the speed limit, but the auto took the fun out of it.
I used to do a lot of business travel and drove plenty of of lousy rental cars, the ones that stood out were:
Dodge Journey – with under 50k miles, the front end shook so hard at 50mph it was scary! It got exponentially worse when braking.
PT Cruiser – enough said.
Ford EcoSport – I think that what they are called, the little (Brazilian?) suv. I guess if I lived in a third world country I’d think it was adequate transportation, but luckily, I do not.
When my car was struck and in a body shop, I got a first generation Nissan Rogue, brand spankin’ new. I remember telling my wife it was the worst car I had ever driven. She ridiculed me for being a car snob..until she rode in it for 10 minutes, then agreed wholeheartedly!
Worst was a Prius C. It may not have been so much that it was bad on its own so much as it wasn’t maintained well. Acceleration was inconsistent. So was Breaking. So was the AC. My wife thought I was just being a car snob until she took a turn at the wheel. I drove it for a week around Chicago, Northwest Indiana and Southern Michigan. It soured me on hybrids to the point that I’m just now coming back around on the idea.
Runner up, and another situation where it was more about suitability: I was in Edinburgh and picking up a car at the train station to tour the highlands. I specifically requested a compact, knowing that the roads are very different from the states. The very helpful agent gave me a “free upgrade” to a Nissan X-trail. The car its self was fine. Just not great in the heart of a medieval city or on one lane backroads in the mountains.
Third is probably a Chevy Malibu.
Hertz Stuck us with a Tesla in Portland Maine.
I attempted to explain that where we were headed didn’t have chargers.So out of way we go so we could charge without being stuck in northern Maine trying to charge on a 120 volt out .It sucked.
I had three bad rentals. One was a Chevy Aveo. It was horrible in every was possible. This wasn’t a “penalty box” horrible; it was more of a “sin bin” horrible.
Next was a 2013 Ford Focus, with a horrible CVT transmission. It kept shifting on is own during cruising speeds and kept stalling the engine. It was an insurance loaner from Enterprise while my car was in the shop. Enterprise refused to give me another car, and my insurance agent refused to help, saying Enterprise was the only rental agency they worked with, so I picked up a car at my own expense from U-Save and returned the other car to Enterprise.
The last car was a Kia Rio. Same complaints as the Aveo, but then I discovered the car had no spare tire or jack – just a can of Fix-A-Flat. Now i check every rental for a spare tire.
Point of clarification, the focus had a DCT, a rather infamous one, not a CVT.
About 10 years ago I reserved a luxury car from Enterprise for an interstate trip. They offered me a Grand Cherokee Laredo. I told them that it wasn’t a luxury car. They said it was. I told them it wasn’t even a car. They said it was. I asked them if there was another choice. They had an Elantra and a Corolla. I had prepaid to save a few bucks so there was no cancelling the deal. The Grand Cherokee was fine, but I resented it every mile.
I used to live in Mississippi and my work required renting a car from the local Enterprise several times a month. I’ve whittled my list down to 3:
The policy was to rent cars out at about a quarter tank. One time the agent said he wasn’t going to give me a car with no gas and he’d go fill it up for me. Came back and he’d filled it up…to a quarter tank.
About 300 miles away from home a nice man stopped me in a parking lot and told me my license plates didn’t match. The front of my car was registered in Alabama and the rear in Texas.
The cars were dirty to the point I began every rental by “detailing” the car with my own Clorox wipes. One time I was driving and heard a weird noise from under the drivers seat. I discovered an empty bottle of Bud Lite with Lime rolling around under there. I’ll never forget the lime.
Alabama is a one-plate state. We don’t have front-mounted license plates.
If this was from Enterprise, I wouldn’t be surprised. I used them only once, and never went back.
I used to do that! I packed a set of wipes to clean the inside of the windows. Ew. Eventually decided my funding source could pay for the rental company a step above Fox.
I had a brand new 2021~ RAV4 for a road trip from Fort Worth to Colorado Springs a few years back. I am not a man who is surrounded by german luxo machines or rolls royces, but good grief, that car was punishing. Hard seats. Surprisingly loud road noise, loud engine drone. This is coming from somebody who daily drives a 350z convertible with a catback exhaust, by the way. The RAV4 wasn’t a complete rotbox, but it was not a pleasant experience.
My family and I are heading to Galveston in a week or two, so we will be praying to the rental car gods for something decent.
It’s kinda a tie…
Either the Jeep Patriot with 7 (seven) miles on it that had more creaks rattles and window whistles than my 250,000 mile Subaru.
Or
The Jeep Renegade that I’m pretty sure was going to throw a wheel bearing and was the scariest vehicle I have ever tried to merge on a freeway with since a 1984 Hyundai Excel.
Chevy Corsica
I had a Chevy HHR for about two weeks, what an awful pile of Garbage Motors dogshit that car was. For whatever reason, the Hertz at that location didn’t have any cars available for two weeks as they were completely booked up, and I was on a two-month project staying in San Jose CA. I called every few days, and they finally had something else returned in week two, which was a Mazda3. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance and swapped out that American pile of crap. Getting into the Mazda3 was like moving out of a Motel 6 and into a decent hotel. Ever since then, whenever I spotted a HHR on the road, I’d cringe a little.
VW Taos. Everything on that car that was dial-based was utterly devoid of feeling and failed to do what I wanted, from the steering to the stereo’s volume knob. I was not surprised to later learn that it’s one of the most disappointing cars on sale in the country. Basic transportation… but just barely.
Back in the early 1990s I worked for an engineering company that had a building inspection and structural inspection contract for General Motors.
It was a multi-million dollar contract to inspect all of the General Motors plants in the United States and this one visit in particular was to the Lake Orion plant.
They couldn’t get us the usual Pontiac Transport or other large GM car and they put in Ford EXPLORERS!
And let me tell you the look on the union workers faces at the Orion Plant when we pulled up in Ford vehicles they went out of their minds and wouldn’t even let us in the plant.
What a cluster that day was. Still laugh about that day. Made $30 an hour back then on that contract… in the early 90’s.
Back when they had us sub-human-intelligence GM badged I/T people visit the mothership, they would warn us repeatedly that we were only allowed to rent GM vehicles. If we showed up with any other brand, we would not be allowed to park within 4 blocks of the Ren Cen and if accounting found out, they would deny rental expenses. Some people just took limos and taxi during the trips if no GM vehicles were available when they arrived at the airport. Cost more, but that was allowed.