Don't Buy Rental Cars!!

So the trick is we rent the cheapest car for work (Kia Rio) and show up and listen as they try to talk us into an upgrade......"you're a big guy, you might be more comfortable in an Impala"........Nope, we will take what we reserved. So then they upgrade you for free since they are out of the Rio's.

Until today....So I got the Rio and found that it is a very tossable car. I am glad I am not driving across the country in it, but I am having fun driving it around Minneapolis spinning tires, locking the rear wheels with the handbrake, hitting redline, and totally accelerating out of corners with the tires spinning like mad.

So what is the craziest thing you have done in a rental car? (driving stuff, please)

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/users/parmega/articles/neon/

saw this a few years back..

I taught my cousin how to drive stick in a rental. She was really bad, and there wasn't much clutch left at the end of it

Apexcarver wrote: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/users/parmega/articles/neon/ saw this a few years back..

AWSOME!!!!

Well, here's my story. I rented a Malibu Maxx 2 years ago in Reno. I was stuck with nothing to do for 2 days. One day I went to the George Harrah auto museum. This is a must do! The next day I decided to drive to Lake Tahoe to see what it was all about. I saw a very enticing 2-track in the mountains and figured after owning ump-teen Jeeps and wheeling for years I could take the little 'bu pretty far up this trail then come back when it was to hard for the little crap-o-box. Well, the trail narrowed as it wound up the mountain they pretty much stopped. I had no choice but to back down this little, tight, winding trail. Using the mirrors and looking over my shoulder I backed quite a way down 'till I got to the point where there was a almost straight up hill on one side and almost a straight down drop on the other (only 2 or 3 feet though). Well, you guessed it, I dropped the right front wheel off the edge and the car teetered a little. I jammed the spare tire, the floor mats, rear seat bottom and every branch I could find under that right front tire to get traction. As I drove it back onto the trail there was tire smoke, banging, squeeling and other nasty mechanical noises. I broke a hubcap into 10,000 pieces in the process. That night I "procured" another hubcap from another Maxx and returned this turd a few days later. It never rode quite the same after that though.

I rented a lincoln LS V8 from hertz once and had lots of fun with the tcs swithed off. Its amazing how fast thoses things will burn through a full tank of gas doing donuts and drifting in empty parking lots. I normaly dont like luxo cars but I would jump at the chance for an LS V8 with a manual trans based on how much fun the auto trans in man mode was. They might even be challenge priced soon. You know the funny thing is that my mother has purchased a number of used rentals from large agencies fleets and never had a bad one yet. The tempo that she bought from hertz back in the eighties lasted throught about eight years and three teenagers. once it did break down and the part that was needed took along time to get from ford because it was something that was only used on fleet sale cars (I think it was an auto trans part, but it was along time ago and my memory for tempos is short). The poor tempo died when it was hit head on by a drunk driver, the car was obliterated but my sister walked away with only minnor injuries.

HappyAndy wrote: I rented a lincoln LS V8 from hertz once and had lots of fun with the tcs swithed off. Its amazing how fast thoses things will burn through a full tank of gas doing donuts and drifting in empty parking lots. I normaly dont like luxo cars but I would jump at the chance for an LS V8 with a manual trans based on how much fun the auto trans in man mode was.

Too bad you could only get the manual with the 6 cyl.

I can't seem to find it any more, but there was the impromptu Rental Neon Olympics about 10 years ago.

Seems there was a rallycross organized for the desert near Reno, and lots of people signed up. Once the location was posted, most of the entrants didn't feel like trailering their real cars that far out into the boonies, so out of the 50 or so entrants, more than half of them simply went to the rental counters and picked up Neons. They signed the waivers and hit the dirt with them. There used to be a webpage about it.

We took a fleet of rental cars (5 actually) to an autocross complete with race rubber and all.

He ran Hertz vs. Enterprise vs. Avis... There was supposed to be a 6th car but the moron didn't show.

I rented one car so far in my life. It was a Kia Spectra. It pulled hard to the right, and was supposed to be paid for by the insurance company, but I ended up forking out some dough for it. But I loved that little car! I couldn't do a mean thing to it. If I had it any longer, I would have washed it. Or maybe had an alignment done.

rental cobalt. Deals gap. 'nough said.

spare tire well makes a good beer cooler as well (linked for large picture) http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v499/TomWolf/P8020543.jpg

When chebby first came out with the 350, we used to rent an Impala, pull the motor and swap in a 283. Chevy 350s were unattainium to a 16 year old, but a rental wasn't very expensive. Just have a buddy's older brother rent it.

I rent a lot, but have only gotten one Impala SS, which is a good thing, as I was probably close to losing my license in it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any autocrosses or tracks in the area. Nice, fun car.

thread content - I have taken many rental cars into muddy job sites. Taking rental cars "off road" is definitely a Bozo no-no, so I've run them through car washes before returning them, especially the one that took me 20 minutes to get unstuck from the mud. Yukkkk.

jack

I've rented maybe 5 or 6 cars in my lifetime, the most "unusual" was an RX2...that was termed a compact car by Budget, but the rotary/auto combo sucked up gas like nobody's business. It had some kind of front end problem that made driving on interstates a bone-rattling experience.

A forgettable rental? A mid '90s Tempo. Why did Ford build this car? Basically, it was an Escort with a slightly longer body, but it didn't have an more (noticeable) interior room. And that 2/3rd of a pushrod 6 cylinder engine dating from the late '50s/early '60s?

LOL, some rental companies put GPS units and other "measuring devices" to see if their cars are bing mistreated.

I am guessing the Rio may not make the listof cars that get these devices.

When I go into other people's houses, I break all the windows and tear out the sheetrock, HaHa, I really owned those losers. Damned capitalist rental car companies trying to make money, they deserve to have their stuff trashed.

Oh wait, I actually grew up somewhere along the way, I actually take care of the rental cars I've had.

Apexcarver wrote: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/users/parmega/articles/neon/ saw this a few years back..

BWAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

That is awesome!

I know some people who worked at rental car agencies and what they do is even worse than what the customers do. Things like driving through ditches at high speed to see how much air they can get coming out the other side.

Well, similar HappyAndy's story, my co-worker and I were on a business trip headed to VA Beach. He goes to pick up the rental car, and they say "How about a PT Cruiser?" He replies "Berkeley no! Don't give me no sissy E36 M3! I want a real car!" So they say "What about a Town Car?" Well, he thought that would do just fine so he picked it up and I met him in the parking lot behind our building. He asked me to drive so he could get some work done, and I had no problem with this. "But first," says I, "Maybe we can do some burnouts and E36 M3 while we have this beast." He shrugs and hops in the car, with windows down. I humbly suggest he roll his window up as I turn the traction control off.

I put the prndy into "1", cut the wheel, and jam the gas as hard and fast as I can. I proceed to do the biggest, smokiest, most nascar-y burnout that parking lot had ever seen, filling the whole area with smoke, being able to see only the line of my headlights as it spun through the haze. My companion was hanging on for dear life, as maniacal laughter filled the cabin from...somewhere. Under the dash maybe? Who knows. I ease off the throttle and the yacht seesaws to a simulacrum of seasick stability. We regain our composure and exit this curious tire fog into the morning.

That afternoon, an email from my boss: "Nice Bullseye."

The enormous ellipse in rubber I left remain to this day, more than a year later, like a marker for buried treasure, or some strange pavement crop circle, a testament to the bad-assedness of the Panther platform.

To quote Jeff Foxworthy:

Buying a used car from a rental place is kind of like looking for a bride at a House-of-ill-repute; anything that's been driven that hard, by that many people... you probably don't want to stick your key in the ignition.

Jeez, worst I ever did was jump a curb in a Geo Metro.

(and they all moved away from me there on the group W bench)

But I did it with enough speed that I was pretty sure there were sparks, and the body flexed so much the interior light came on.

(and they all came back...)

"You can get anything you want / At Marjorie's restaurant..."

Tim Baxter wrote: Jeez, worst I ever did was jump a curb in a Geo Metro. *(and they all moved away from me there on the group W bench)* But I did it with enough speed that I was pretty sure there were sparks, and the body flexed so much the interior light came on. *(and they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.)*

if you're gonna quote alice's restaurant, at least keep the funny part of the line in it.

Back around 1990, I won a couple of autocrosses in Shelby CSX-T's rented from Thrifty.

I like to randomly pull the e brake in rentals..

that and neutral slams.