Good and bad rental cars

There've been a couple of threads recently on the worst cars you've ever owned. And they've been very entertaining. I thought I'd extend it to rental cars. Have you had anything so woeful that it put you off a whole brand for life? Or anything so good that it didn't feel like a rental?

I'll start.

As a kid, I remember my parents hiring SEATs in Spain. This was in the days before the VW takeover, when SEAT was a State-owned Spanish company making Fiat's worst cars under licence, with less quality control than there was at Fiat in the 70s. I distinctly remember Dad complaining about a SEAT 500 that kept suddenly veering to the left, into oncoming traffic.


And then there was the other great holiday as a kid, when we went through three cars in three days in New York: a Chevrolet Celebrity wagon that wasn't legally registered; a Pontiac 6000 that started pouring out steam (it turned out someone had stolen the radiator cap and replaced it with saran wrap); and a Plymouth Reliant with a heater jammed on maximum (we were about to drive to Florida, in spring). All were from Avis.

For cars I hired myself, I think the worst has to be a Rover 214, from Europcar in Britain.



I was the last person to pick up a car that night, and they locked the door behind me. At my first roundabout, the brakes bit... and then there was a bang, and they completely lost interest and I narrowly missed an oncoming truck. Europcar didn't offer any sort of roadside recovery, and the office was already closed. I ended up driving the 70 miles to my parents' house in 2nd gear, using engine braking and the handbrake. Fun. It goes back to that "British quality" comment on the "worst car you ever owned" thread.

And then, for my most embarrassing, there was the incident in Melbourne last year. I was there for a very high-level meeting, trying to close a deal with some Australian and Chinese agriculture people. And I had to turn up in this:



Yes. A bright pink Nissan Micra.

It wasn't a terrible car: it was comfortable and manoeuvrable and well made (turns out there is good quality stuff coming out of Britain these days). But it was kind of ... pink. And I was meeting a bunch of farmers from outback Australia and Inner Mongolia, none of them terribly metrosexual. When I arrived and got out of the car, one of the people I was meeting laughed so hard he started crying. Which wasn't the best start to the meeting. The Chinese delegation all made me stand next to the car while they took pictures. I also got openly laughed at by people in the bar when I pulled up at my hotel that evening. They didn't even know me.

As for good rentals....

A Mustang convertible in Hawaii (in 2000, so not one of the new, improved Mustangs). In terms of quality and dynamics, it was dire. But it was just the right car for that holiday.

And a Skoda Superb in Perth.



I'd heard that Skoda had improved dramatically, but this was far more than I'd expected. It was enormous inside, and unbelievably comfortable and quiet and economical, and astonishingly well-made, and exceedingly well-equipped, and generally lovely. I was sad to take that one back. My only criticism would be the automatic parking: it wasn't as good at parking as me, and I'm crap at parking.

But the horror stories are more interesting. So what have you had?