Rental Cars

[Volksy]

I'm off to visit an old freind in Whitby tomorrow, and given that the Ovlov is still smoking like Dot Cotton I decided to rent a brick to get me there and back. I've gone with enterprise, and for £40ish quid have been promised a Fucus/Disastra type thing. Being enterprise, and their somewhat varied choice of fleet I'm gonna end up with a Chevy Lettuce or something.. Doesn't matter though, as Renta-chod are always the best handling/performing cars, no matter what they are, as they aint yours...

[shite_meister]

In the words (or similar) of P J O'Rourke, the best performing car in the world is a rental car

 

An ideal chance to practice your handbrake turns and see what its really like when you change gear without using the clutch

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I've used Enterprise for years. For £40 a day you'll get a nice TDi Mondeo, Focus, decent spec Golf. No need to stoop to low end GM rubbish.

[Pillock]

Rental cars should be subjected to the following tests as soon as you're out of sight/earshot of the rental office.1. Rev limiter test. 2. Does the traction control deactivate when the button is pressed?3. Handbrake response at 25mph into a corner.Regarding traction control, I'm told most manufacturers provide a way for the TC to remain on even when the button is pressed and the light comes on. I do know that you can turn it off on RWD new-shape transits though and slide them around corners....I had a Vectra Elegance from work once. They'd dropped it off with 26 miles on the clock which ain't bad, since I lived 20 miles from the rental office. I fugging hammered that, thrashed the heck out of it just for being a boring vauxhall. I was quite impressed with the cruise control though, only car I've ever had with it on. I overtook my mate on the way to work after my holid, erm, training course with my feet up on the dash, accelerating with the button on the wheel. I are classy.

[Guest]

I've used Enterprise for years. For £40 a day you'll get a nice TDi Mondeo, Focus, decent spec Golf. No need to stoop to low end GM rubbish.

Really? The Enterprise in Broadheath tried to charge me £83 a day for the world's most fucked Chevrolet Matiz on the planet. It stank of stale farts and had £6's worth of fuel in it.When I kicked off at Tossco insurance for fucking my like for like policy up eventually they paid for the rental, but despite my car not being ready and paying extra on the policy for a rental car 'the length of time your car is being repaired' they tried to take it off me after two weeks.Eventually got this extended, but in the end they tried to charge me again so I took the stupid piece of shit to where I was keeping the Amazon at the time and pressed that into daily service and told them I'd chuck the Matiz keys out of the window when I was going near their office.Having tested it thoroughly, I can confirm that:1st gear is good for 47 mph,The back end is way too soft and tries to spin the car when you press on.DTEC engines like to drink oil when ragged. Did I top it up? Did I fuck.Doing third gear on the M56 at 69 mph is quite a laugh after a shit day taking calls.The inside wheel will smoke like a fucker if you change down from fourth in a tight bend down to second and nail it.The 1 litre four pot runs like a bag of shit.The brakes in general are shit.The pedal box is offset and the gearbox is nasty.Overall, I don't know why you would pay anything over £300 for one. After picking 'mine' up from a Chorlton side street, the rep announced they'd sold it...for £3995! Stupid fuckers, if they'd had any idea.....

[Father Ted]

Having been right royally shafted by car hire / supply companies before now in conjunction with insurance companies (took a Mk3 disAstra off me during the day whilst I was out doiing home visits - then charged me something stupid like £3/litre for refueling it when they had taen the car off me without warning - cnuts)I ditched the "guaranteed hire car" option on the policy and replaced it with "buy a cheap shitter if I stuff the motor" option. Last one I bought was a Fiesta, which with a couple of bodge repairs was smoked around in for 3 weeks whilst the car was fixorated aand then sold on for what I paid for it

[Cavcraft]

Had a 2006 Fiesta Ghia for quite a few weeks after Direct Liars did there usual trick of fucking up/telling lies and that thing was ragged mercilessly.If they'd offered me a Ka or a VW I'd have walked

[outlaw118]

I believe the phrase is "Drive It Like You Stole It".SWMBO used to work for Europcar, and occasionally got to bring something home at the weekends.Which I attempted to murder.I perfected by J-turn technique in a Mark 3 Astra 1.4, and managed to fit 8 pissed up blokes (and me) in a BMW320i. (That was horrible btw, just about to come off rental, so less than a year old, and already sounding like throwing your cutlery into the washing machine).

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I can't say I've ever abused a rental car. I don't really see the point in trying to break something that isn't mine. Sanctimonious possibly, but after Hertz/Avis etc, someone will buy that car as their own. £83 a day for a Matiz? Yeah, righto. Only if you've got about 54 points on your licence and a couple of DD convictions. A small Ka sized car is £28 a day here.

[r.welfare]

I've just booked a rental for next week (one of my regular trips to Bradford) through our electronic work link-up with National. In the "comments" box I put "No more Zafiras, please" - wonder if it will work? I'd much rather be in my own mota, but if you're doing more than 150 miles in day a rental it has to be - policy is policy. Still, gives me a view of what I might be driving in 2020, anyway.

[pogweasel]

Chuffing rentals, most of the ones I've had have broken down, icluding the epic fail of a 50-mile-fresh Focus which chomped through £40 worth of pez in 70 miles before going into electronic melt-down (even the AA man hadn't got the foggiest). Wouldn't be so bad but for the fricking 'return policy' on the things, we used to get them from Avis where I used to work, but the nearest Avis to my house is 30 miles away and closes at 6, so having limped said chodbox home, I was then informed I would have to wait 3 hours for an AA recovery truck, then go with the car back to london to get a replacement. Bollocks to that, back to using impressively-miled old crocs. And they'd forever try and charge for 'damage', i.e the lightest of marks that just a quick polish would remove and they'd ask for £500+++, to which the reply was always to go and take a running jump. Only once have I had a good experience, picked up an Avis 206SW at Belfast airport and spent several weeks mercilessly thrashing it, never broke down. I returned it caked in mud inside and out, devoid of fuel and with half the front bumper and NS mirror in the boot. The returns man was totally unfased by this and no more came of it. White vans provided by work is a different matter, clutch? What clutch? Makes it all the more fun.

[Pillock]

I once had a Punto that work had booked for a trip to catch a flight to sunny Belgium.Trouble is, it was an early monday morning flight and so they'd dropped the car off on Friday at my house with instructions that I wasn't insured to drive it till Monday. We had a party on the saturday so I'm afraid to say we sort of used the Punto as a table, entertainment system and garden lighting. Well, they'd put it right in the middle of the driveway and told me I couldn't drive it!But the worst part is we had a game of 'see how many raw sausages you can get into the crossmember in front of the radiator' after we'd barbecued. I'd imagine they started to stink after a while since there was no way we could get them back out. Taking the car out on monday, I found that full-throttle gearchanges were possible without using the clutch. Excellent! I could pretend it was a much better car Except it had the effect of making 3rd really quite notchy, even with the clutch.... ooopsie. I drove it to Birmingham, dropped it off sans petrol since I was late and guessed work would cover it.A couple of days after my return I was summoned into the office at work. "Did you have a hire car to get to Birmingham?" my boss asked. I told him I did and awaited my shafting..... "you left your jumper in the boot. They're posting it to us.":)

[Guest]

Comedy.

I found that full-throttle gearchanges were possible without using the clutch. Except it had the effect of making 3rd really quite notchy, even with the clutch....

Thatll be bent selector forks then. Nice work!

[Mr Lobster]

I can't say I've ever abused a rental car. I don't really see the point in trying to break something that isn't mine. Sanctimonious possibly, but after Hertz/Avis etc, someone will buy that car as their own.

Very true. And remember that when somone causes a couple of grands worth of damage to a car someone has to pay. If the hire company can't charge it back to the driver - and they don't manage to an awful lot - then it comes out of their budget. And this means that the staff in the branch end up suffering one way or another. Plus almost all rental companies use the same risk prevention software. So if they don't want to rent to you again then you end up effectively blacklisted.And yes, I have a vested interest in this

[Torsten2001]

I'm sure a nice new hired Chevrolet Matiz driven to the edge of destruction is a very exciting thing to do ffs. If I find anyone doing that to any of my vehicles, and I do, I will hit them extremely hard financially, thankfully the vast majority of hirers are respectful, the others are twats.

[Mr Lobster]

Couldn't agree more Torsten. The people who willfully abuse cars are relatively few, but we tend to get even with them one way or another

[scrappylad]

I usually treat hire cars better than I treat my own cars... and I treat them very well. I suppose its about respect for anothers property, be it that of a multi-national company or from a mate whose given you a loan of his car for the day.Once hired a Daihatsu Sirion automatic some years ago & I loved it! Was sorry when I had to hand it back

[Pete-M]

I can't say I've ever abused a rental car. I don't really see the point in trying to break something that isn't mine. Sanctimonious possibly, but after Hertz/Avis etc, someone will buy that car as their own.

Heh. In my secret past in car hire I've worked for Avis, Hertz, Eurodollar, Budget, National, and a load of independent car hire companies (and limo hire places). It's my 'stand-by' for emergencies, that's about the one job I can happily say I'm fully time served at.I can also confirm a few truths about hire cars. A Peugeot 406 HDi (90 bhp) can keep superbikes at bay down twisty A-roads. Unfortunately, it'll also average 13 mpg and never be quite as together feeling again.A 1.0 Toyota Yaris does 12 mpg average if you're in a real hurry to get to work in the morning, woke up at 7.55 and are due to be in work, 30 miles away at 8am - and you're the boss with the only keys to the place.A Ford Ka will indicate ludicrously high cruising speeds if its a Dutch registered hire car that two Dutch stoners have had impounded and you need to take it back to Rotterdam. Ditto with a Swedish Saab 9-5 that was left in Warrington by a couple of Danish nuclear scientists and had to be wangled back to Gottenburg via the Newcastle ferry. Which I was late for.Oh, and Vectras are terrible over hump-backed bridges. Mitsubishi Galant V6s are much better at that kind of malarky.

[Volksy]

Well, they gave me an Astra 1.8 Elite. I guess that is a high spec model, as it came with pretty much everything. Horrid Autobox though, couldn't decide what gear it needed to be in, and a 60mph would do a hunt between 3rd and 4th giving rather jerky progess. Averaged 26.4mpg However, handled very well, and was well speced.Won't be ecoflexing the Ovlov in for one.One odd thing though, My local branch of enterprise only charge 92p a litre to refuel.. Cheaper than the petrol station.. Hows that work then??

[oldford]

Probably as it is 92p + VAT, it could still be a bargain as 10 years ago Europcar were charging £1.00 a litre + VAI remember one evening at Eurodollar we had a delivery of brand new Sierras. We parked them up on an open forecourt, took the spare keys off the keyrings and just chucked them in the bin next to the parked cars.Another night at Europcar, we were ordered to release a transporter load of cars. I was told to park them on the road (about 2 inches apart), lock all but the first one up, put the keys in the glovebox of the first car, lock it and put its keys up its exhaust pipe and they'll be collected shortly after closing time. They were still there the following morning.Incidentally, 1.2 Vauxhall Novas will do an indicated 75 mph in second gear.