“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
I had a Nissan Versa in Miami recently. I got it with less than 50 miles on it. Pile of shit. Gutless. One of our days we drove to Key West for the day. The drivers seat caused literal pain in my ass. Most uncomfortable seats ever. A concrete park bench would be more comfortable. In fact I have sat on more comfortable concrete benches. A pile of rocks would probably be more comfortable.
I had reserved a midsize car but they didn’t have one when we got there. There were many people that didn’t look like they were going to get the car they reserved so I took what I could get and got out of there. The mob was getting angry. I thought pitch forks might be coming out. It looked like the kind of scene that might end up on the evening news.
A Kia Soul with 70,000 rental miles, overinflated and cupped tires, warped rotors, and wipers that did nothing (super fun on a rainy night). That was actually the second vehicle Avis gave me. The first was a crew cab Ram with a tire going flat. It had already been a long day; the last leg of my flight got cancelled and at that point it was approaching midnight. I had a 3.5 hour drive home and was in no position to deal with more bullshit. The Soul, even though it was demonstrably terrible and miserable to drive, at least got me home.
But it doesn’t stop there! A couple weeks later I get an email that I would be getting billed something like $40 for either damages or roadside assistance (it didn’t specify which category, just that it was one of those two). The car did have existing body damage when I picked it up, but I figured that would be more like $400, so I was at a complete loss on what they were on about. After some back and forth, they sent me a copy of the invoice… for an oil change. I pushed back, they doubled down, I tripled down, and they eventually relented.
That was just one of a series of several bad experiences. I now rent with Hertz.
A few years back I went out of my way to rent a fun car for a friend’s wedding and chose a Mercedes SLC300 2-seater. Whoof.
It rode like a tractor, leaked water, had almost literally zero cargo space, road noise was awful, and ergonomics were like something out of a 1961 Gemini capsule.
100% my fault, but my desire to ever own a MB roadster died real quick.
As a fun aside, I’m currently in a rental while my daily gets fixed (fender bender, their fault) and I’m amazingly disappointed with the 2022 Toyota Camry I have. I expected much, much better from a Toyota.
Kia Sephia. It wouldn’t start if there was a hint of rain. I rented the car in Florida during the rainy season. It was made of cardboard too.
C/P of my message to Dollar customer service regarding a 2019 Nissan Pathfinder that I rented last summer in Richmond, VA for a OBX vacation:
I noticed blue cloud of smoke out of rear of vehicle when accelerating shortly after leaving Richmond Intl. Airport. Checked oil level immediately in an auto parts store parking lot and found it was so low on oil that nothing was showing on the dipstick.
On advice from Dollar Customer Service, I put in 2 qts of oil (saved receipt) until oil was reading full. Vehicle continued to burn a LOT of oil on acceleration, but runs okay otherwise. Called Dollar customer service back and was advised to exchange the vehicle at the nearest Dollar location. That would be in Norfolk, VA which is 66 miles from my current location which was a non-starter for me.
Upon vehicle return, I was unable to get resolution in person at Richmond International Airport. The vehicle consumed/burned 8 quarts of oil over a 5 day rental period. I purchased two 5 quart oil jugs to replenish the oil that was burned at a total cost of $70.47 (I have receipts). My vacation plans were hampered severely as I was continuously preoccupied with avoiding a vehicle breakdown.
This vehicle should have never been released to a customer. I require reimbursement for the oil I purchased and would like to know what Dollar Car Rental is going to do to make this right. I will hold off on leaving the review of my experience until Dollar Car Rental has had the opportunity to rectify this.
My resolution was a $50 voucher toward a future rental.
Agent: I’m sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.
Jerry: I don’t understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?
Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That’s why you have the
reservation.
Agent: I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don’t think you do. If you did, I’d have a car. See, you know how to
take the reservation, you just don’t know how to *hold* the reservation and
that’s really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody
can just take them.
Dodge Avenger easily. When they said I was getting Dodge I was like cool, some RWD muscle car for a week. And it was that shitbox.
Honorable mention to Lancia Ypsilon on one trip to Italy. It was OK on city, but man it was falling in pieces @10tkm and semis almost overran us as it was totally out of steam in any slope on motorway. And we were only going like 105km/h.
The worst cars for the car hire were all of the Ford products in the US and in Europe.
I got Ford Tempo with world’s shittiest headlamps, and I could hardly see the roads in the rural areas even with the high beam switched on. And the world’s shortest seat tracks that didn’t go a few inches back: bad for my long legs. Did I mention how gutless the engine was?
In Europe, I got Ford Focus C-Max (first generation) from Enterprise with flappy 1.6-litre petrol engine for the drive from Munich to Paris and back. Same short seat track. Slightly better headlamps (as they are ECE headlamps, duh). The engine was so extremely underpowered that I pushed the pedal to the metal a lot of time on the Autobahnen trying to keep up with the traffic. I ended up making three fuel stops along the way, costing me lot of money. A side note: Audi A4 Avant with 2-litre diesel engine could easily cruise at 180–200 km/h, and I could go the whole distance (Munich–Paris) on one tank.
The best surprise was 2013 BMW 530d xDrive Touring. One of the best diesel cars I have ever driven.
Worst? We got given a base model Toyota Yaris for a tour of the NZ South Island.
Stupid me booked the cheapest car because I had status with the rental car company at home, and when I rented they never had any base models onsite so always gave me a decent upgrade for free. Surely it would happen here right?
Wrong. We got off the Interislander ferry in Picton to find at least a dozen of the hateful things out front. Not a bad car per se, but severely underpowered for mountain driving. When we timed it, 0-100kmh took 16 seconds…
Honourable mention to the Micra convertible, in turquoise, that I had for a few days in the Cook Islands. A deeply mediocre car, but so odd that it turned around the dial to being excellent.
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.