My Boss rented a Prius!

"insanely quiet" I love it. I've had passnegers ask if the car is even on!

Where is your boss away on business? I travel quite a bit and always request a Prius, but have never encountered any of the "larger" rental companies having a one avialable to rent. And by "larger" rental companies, I mean Enterprise, Avis and Hertz.

 

guess he went to B without going to drive first.

 

Thanks for getting back to me Laughingman.
I was recently in Portland, OR. While I saw numerous Priuses on the road, I got stuck renting a Hyundai.

 

Won't happen with me, my boss had one long before I did.

BTW, when I rented one for a couple of weeks, it was Enterprise. That was back in January.

 

How did you manage to track one down? Enterprise seems to disavow all knowledge of having Prii for rent.

 

That's because Enterprise did not keep renting the Prius. Before the mileage got too high, these desirable (though optionless) cars were sold and not replaced.

I was offered a Prius from Enterprise in the St. Louis area in April, 2004, right after I got on the waiting list. I said no because I had other things to talk about on my trip and did not want to distract the family.

We rented a Saturn instead, which (unlike the one I owned long ago) was truly nothing to talk about.

 

Notice I mentioned this was in January? It seems that their policy changed.

I had got on a list at one dealer in September '04 and was told that the wait was a year and a half. I figured I could wait and didn't think about it much. My wife got into an accident and we needed a car while her car was being checked. We went to Enterprise (near the dealer who was looking at her car) and they asked what car we wanted. We didn't care until they mentioned they had a Prius. I used that while my wife used the car I was driving. Actually we were pretty lucky. I was able to really test it without a dealer nearby. I was able to see how the seating was as the only time I had actually sat in one was for 20 seconds when I went to get on the list.

The funny part was that I had rented a #1, but got a #6. I was unprepared for the SKS and the NAV system. :lol:

 

I have to head out to Monterey, CA next week. I called the local Toyota dealerships near where I was landing, and asked if they would rent me a Prius through their TRAC program. The rate was comprable to what you would expect from a "larger" rental company.

Your mileage may vary...

 

I rented a white 04 in late 2003 in Ft Myers. That's wehre I got the bug.

 

My Dealership is one of those Mega-Mall arrangements with a half dozen dealerships all in one location, and they have a captive Enterprise office there.

When the Prius first came out, they had a pile of absolutely stripped White ones (not even a rear wiper), for rent.

As soon as they figured out they could make a tidy profit selling them because of the demand, they took them all out of service and sold them. In fact, they sold them through the dealership instead of through the Enterprise Used Car sales channel.

What was interesting was the prep for resale. One day I was at the dealership and there was this line of rentals in the process of de-commissioning.

They had the rear hatches open, and were pulling out this very interesting looking 'black box' from each car. They had located it in the little storage space in the rear on the opposite side from the 12V battery.

I have no idea what it was, but I presume GPS, Speed Sensor, and all the other 'big brother' data logging auto rental agencies are doing these days.

I'd never seen one before