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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I had the pleasure of driving from Denver to Summit county in a Hyundai Santa Cruz. Honestly I was super impressed with it. Perfect rental car to bring 3 people with ski gear to the slopes, and got much better gas mileage than a full size truck getting up to the mountains. Made me appreciate this new generation of “enough-trucks” ie: Ford Maverick, Hyundai Santa Cruz, and maybe Honda Ridgeline.
San Francisco, a couple of years ago: We flew in and planned to drive to Sacremento and then wine country. The company gave us the key to a small crossover with a rear hatch that did an R5-D4 and refused to latch after we opened it. We unloaded, went back to the counter to exchange it, and I asked for a CAR. We got an R2-D2 blue Corolla to drive at 10/10ths through Wine Country. It redefined understeer, and I, just now, had to look up exactly what the model was, but I brought it back with much less tread on the fronts!
Actually, it might have been a Sentra…
I was driving some extended family around for a week, so I got a Chrysler Pacifica, and it was – not bad! Better than expected! Smooth drive, surprisingly good handling, huge interior, generally a fine place to spend a lot of time. Gas mileage wasn’t great, but my daily’s a 3 series, so I don’t know how much of that was the minivan and how much was my right foot. Chrysler’s been doing the minivan thing a long time, though, and it shows.
I had a 530e as the rental before that (I think someone at Enterprise parked it in the wrong section) – very comfortable, and fast as you could want, but the steering was so numb I didn’t trust the car – I wound up keeping it on eco mode and just treating it as a cruiser, which it Was very good at. Fine ride, but disappointing for something with the blue & white propeller on the front.
Two years ago I rented a Ram 1500 Warlock to haul rafting gear around the southwest. It was surprisingly good! We put in two long days of driving on two-lane highways, and it was a great place to be. Plenty of power for passing, decent handling for a full-size truck, and it didn’t smell funny. And it got around 20mpg. I did find the brake pedal a bit high – as in I couldn’t have the ball of my foot on the pedal while my heel was on the ground, which is weird when you wear a size 12. I later found out some Rams have had adjustable pedals, so maybe that was the problem.
I found the “WARLOCK” decals on the rear quarters hilarious every time I saw them.
My last was a Jetta too! Technically, it was a service loaner from the VW dealership I used to work at and it covered us while our 2012 Tiguan was in for extensive engine work. It was a 2022 Jetta SEL and it rocked. We used the hell out of it for a weekend and it was totally a lovely little car. It felt appropriately luxurious inside, it was composed, quick enough, and the gas mileage was great.
I was always a fan of selling the Jetta and would gladly buy a manual base model or a GLI. The base car is loaded with great features and the manual always had a nice feel to it. The GLI is a hoot and practical too.
I requested an Alfa Romeo Giulia or a Cadillac CT5. I ended up with an Audi Q3. It wasn’t quite the roomy luxury car I had requested for a one-way from Detroit to NYC last summer. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much we liked it. It was simple, good on gas, and the glass roof was perfect by the time we drive through Manhattan.
I had a work trip to North Carolina in March. My company has a deal with National so I always do the Emerald Aisle, of course. On this day, there was an electric blue Ford Mustang convertible sitting there begging to be taken. It was the first week I’d felt temps over 65 anywhere since last fall and so driving around with the top down for a couple days made it perhaps the best random rental car experience I’ve ever had.
I had a Nissan Sentra in Michigan last week. The only thing it had going for it were the 6 miles on the odometer when I started it up. The floor mats were still in plastic bags. This week in Virginia, I ended up with a Genesis Electrified G80. I’m still finding all the controls, but it’s a nice ride. I rent often enough (nearly weekly for work) that I occasionally get a good upgrade. It’s always a good week when I end up with 8 cylinders up front, being pushed from the back!
Last summer. 2022 Expedition EL (2 wheel drive). Drove it from Salt Lake to the Tetons and back, and got in the low 20’s MPG at altitude, which impressed me. Everyone in the family loved it, and even when we were tooling around on some ‘4×4 only’ fire roads and USDA forest roads in the back country, the rear locker kept us in line. 10/10, would recommend.
2018-ish?. Brand new Chevy impala. I don’t get the hate, except for the piano black crap in the interior, which showed dirt and fingerprints so bad. Drove it from PA to TN and back for a wedding, and saved money over what it would have cost us in extra gas to take our AWD sienna. 9/10, would recommend, but do something about that interior.
I had a Malibu that was modestly spec’d, except for a panoramic sunroof which was genuinely nice. When I got it I was initially pretty disappointed. After two weeks with it I was sad to see it go. It wasn’t the quickest or most agile sedan I’ve ever driven, but it genuinely did just about everything well. For a GM product the interior materials were downright decent.
It made me hope that someday we can continue to keep the van around for family/adventure duty and replace the Forester with a real car for commuting duty.
Jeep Grand Cherokee hybrid. Got decent gas mileage, but the battery was perpetually at 0% because it came that way and I was too lazy to find a place to charge it. First time driving a hybrid (PHEV at that) and it was pleasant, but had to get used to the breaking. Not bad considering I paid for a Corolla!
Cadillac XT4. Fucking dreadful. 30k on the clock and looked like it was utterly spent.
“The Standard of the World”
Yeah Nah.
Kia Forte. Great fuel mileage. Not too shabby. Except, the auto-lane-keeping cruise control was terrifying. I had zero trust in it. Probably didn’t help that I flew in on a red eye and had maybe an hour of sleep?
Wow, this is such a coincidence because I just recently had a rental car issue and then a week later y’all ask this question…I could hardly believe it since I’ve never had a problem but haven’t rented many cars. So basically I was on vacation in Daytona, FL (Flew into Orlando, then drove) and got a flat tire and it turns out it was bald. It was even down to the metal under the tread since I had driven a ways. I put the spare on just to get where I was going. The thing is they wouldn’t do anything and wouldn’t reimburse me and blamed me for not putting it on the paperwork. It was mostly on the inside edge of tread where it was hard to see. It was bad enough to where they knew that it was bald and gave us the car anyway. A small part was my fault since I used a cheap, off-site rental place. It was a Corolla so luckily everything else worked good. The biggest thing I want to put out there is this:
DO NOT FUCKING USE CARWIZ RENTAL IN ORLANDO, FL!!!
Dumbass fuckers…I’m actually planning on having a lawyer that I already know call them sometime & get my $ and tell them not to give people bald tires
Toyota Corolla last week. Perfectly serviceable for just me getting around for a few days. Mostly low speed city driving, topped out about 70 on the freeway once, no start stop crap, didn’t bother connecting my phone to the car (used an earbud). Perfectly cromulent car.
I had a Toyota RAV4 I rented in Los Angeles. It was meh. There was more body roll than I was expecting, especially compared to the Mazda CX-9 I drove spiritedly through the Rocky Mountains a year prior, but it otherwise did fine in LA traffic.
I had a base level white Malibu as well. Most miserable car I’ve ever driven (and I’ve driven some sad cars). There was no joy in driving it, you had to fight to stay awake, it was so boring. The child immediately dubbed it “Mayonnaise”. My experience matches DM’s almost exactly.
I got a Ford Fiesta and it was a blast! It wouldn’t work for me as a purchase but it was a fun little car.
A long term remote work assignment netted me a white over beige 2022 base spec Chevy Malibu, the most rentally of rental cars.
It had less than 1000 miles on the clock when I picked it up and it already felt old. The interior felt like a ten year old car. I had to double check the mileage to be sure I wasn’t looking at a trip odometer.
The engine was feckless and the cvt sucked out any verve it might have otherwise had. It cornered like a marshmallow and got mediocre mpg considering the lack of power. It managed about 3 more hwy mpg than our family’s 2017 Pacifica. The van is far quicker too.
Oh, and there was a hailstorm while I had it and it looked like a golf ball afterward. None of the other cars in the same parking lot had damage that I could see. So it has extra thin sheet metal. Nice.
The only thing it had going for it was an ok highway ride. I drove it back and forth between Virginia and Tennessee a few times and the roads were pretty smooth, but it was competent and reasonably quiet on a long drive.
I put several thousand miles on it over the two month extended rental and I’ve never felt absolutely no connection to a car I’ve driven that long. It’s the vehicular equivalent of an ambivalent shrug. GM did it, they out-beiged the Camry. Congrats? Unfortunately, I’m guessing they didn’t nail the reliability portion of the competition.
Drove grandma’s Honda Fit down to North Carolina to pass on to my nephew as my daughter graduated from college and no longer needed it. As it was a one way trip, I opted for a rental car back.
They upgraded whatever rental package I had to a newish Volvo S90. Needless to say, it was a little bit of an upgrade from the Fit. Besides never being able to get my phone to sync with the dash screen, the thing that surprised me the most was the low 30s mpg that I achieved at highway speeds coming up through the mountains back to Ohio and then Michigan.
When I stopped in Ohio to visit my folks and take them out to eat in the beast, they couldn’t believe the sedan cost over $70k new (the sticker was in the glovebox.) Easily twice as much as anyone in my family had paid for a car to that point.
so I always book a Corolla car as it’s generally just me and then it’s easy to aprk and use less low fuel.
so natrually last one they gave me was a Jeep Wrangler Hybrid. being I avoid SUV’s as much a spossible it was enlightening and making me less want one even more.
plus it used all the fuel!
The week before that I ended up in a Challenger AWD which whilst stupid was actually fun and used less fuel than the Jeep.
prior to that I actually ended up with a Corolla for first time in over 10 years.
and the one before was a BMW X3 which was nice but def did not feel value for money.
The rental lottery is a fun thing!
Work travel season starts again in a couple months so will see what this year brings.
It’s been a while since I needed one so may last rental a Mazda2 in 2014. It was fine driving around DC but a little cramped with 4 people and luggage. I’d still buy one if I needed a small car. Oddly the rental before that was an F150 crew cab. It was fine, and currently own an older F150.
Hmmm, It was an Altima. It was fine. Before that we rented an F150 from Logan to Western Mass one-way coming home from a year in Germany. It was also fine. I hadn’t driven a new truck since about 2001 when I was remodeling houses in SF Bay area. We had a brand new F550 and also a new F350. Both crew cab long bed dualies, with tool box beds. Both V10. Those trucks friggin’ rocked.
For the year in Germany, it was an ID4 for a one year rental. I loved it in many ways, but yes, the touch controls are crap, especially that damn window control. And for Germany, too damn big on the outside and pathetically undersized in the cargo area. We rented a touran to go on vacation in Normandy because of better cargo space gasoline. We learned our lesson road tripping an EV when we drove the ID4 to the North Sea. Sure there are charging stations, but each one wants a different membership and its own fucking app to even be able to pay. WTF? What happened to just using your bank card or credit card or cash? This is the biggest barrier to EV adoption. Just let us pay without your stupid app. Anyways, Most McDonalds along the Autobahn have an Ewe-go fast charger and we did have a card for that one.
Brand new 4-door Wrangler last December in Florida. I wanted a soft top, but they didn’t have one, so we had the hard top with the removable front pieces. I did not like the auto trans. It seemed like it was always in, or going into the wrong gear. Hit the gas and it would upshift briefly before kicking down. Never driven an auto Wrangler so not sure if they are all like that. The year before that we had a Chevy Equinox, I HATED that thing! The sensors for the lane departure and auto brakes were way off. I would signal, check blind spots, start to change lanes and the damn car would throw me back into the lane I was in, when there was nothing next to me. Pulling up behind a car at a yield sign, slowly, keeping appropriate distance, and the auto brakes slammed on and threw me into the seatbelt. I don’t know if this Equinox has been damaged, because I’ve driven another one and it was a year older with more miles and it made the under 5k miles rental feel like a giant shitbox.
A Toyota 4Runner I rented from Budget last September in Portland, ME. I don’t remember the year, but it was very new; only 10,000 or so on the odometer. I actually got in very late due to a series of flight delays, and was shocked that such a desireable vehicle was still available that time of night. After about 10 minutes on the road, it was very clear why the 4Runner had been left behind…someone had used it to transport some very wet dogs (and I would put serious money on at least one of those dogs having an ear infection). I called Budget about the issue the next day; after informing me that the vehicle “had a history” according to their system, I was offered a free exchange, but I was concerned I would end up with something blah, so I decided to tolerate the dog smell. I used nearly an entire can of Febreeze in the car that week, but the smell had gotten into the HVAC system, so it was still less than pleasant. Otherwise, it was a great vehicle, and I’m very glad I had the chance to drive it.