Traveling and renting unfamiliar cars

[Kern Dog]

This friggin nanny state safety bullshit…
We drove through rain on the way to the airport and the some light came up on the dash… like a wavy noodle under a car or something. The car surged and stalled and surged and stalled all with the same gas pedal pressure. At the same time the steering pulled left and right like torque steering in a powerful front wheel drive car. With over a million miles of driving experience in hundreds of cars, I’ve never had a car try to control me like this piece of **** did.
I don’t need that ****, I don’t want that **** n

 

[Sam69sat]

I rented a car a few years back to drive myself home from the airport and couldn't figure out how to pop the fuel door at the gas station. I'm used to driving old junk. I looked all over for a lever or button. A lady saw me fumbling around and came over to help. She pushed on the fuel door and it popped right open. Man i felt dumb!

 

[Kern Dog]

I noticed that some things in this car are not obvious but once you figure it out, it is okay. It just pisses me off to see things change for no reason to something that is not an improvement. The rear view mirror is mounted too low, I feel like a 7 foot giant driving this thing. There is some electronic crap on the windshield above the mirror and both of these things block forward visibility. How are tourists supposed to read street signs through an obstructed windshields like this? This turd had no gas cap either. I’d guess that has been common for other cars too though. Our newest is a 2015 Challenger and while it also has some electronic crap I don’t like, everything about it is familiar and makes sense.

 

[68BabyBlue]

This friggin nanny state safety bullshit…
We drove through rain on the way to the airport and the some light came up on the dash… like a wavy noodle under a car or something. The car surged and stalled and surged and stalled all with the same gas pedal pressure. At the same time the steering pulled left and right like torque steering in a powerful front wheel drive car. With over a million miles of driving experience in hundreds of cars, I’ve never had a car try to control me like this piece of **** did.
I don’t need that ****, I don’t want that **** n

Thanks for this thread, Greg. After reading it, I think my current refusal to use air travel or rental cars is totally justified. My newest daily driver is a 2007, and after reviewing your recent experience, if I replace any, it will be with something even older.

 

[Ron H]

Pardon me for some stretching on rentals. The two-times we visited our daughter in Costa Rica when she was there in the PC, rental options were minimal. Few of them have automatics, which I preferred a stick anyway, given the roads and fortunate to have one w/ 4WD as I learned on our 1st trip. Where we had to drive, many roads are unpaved rutted washboards, incredibly steep hills, no shoulders, etc. But the condition of the rentals were terrible. Balding tires being one. At the airport the first vehicle provided had tires worn below the wear-bars. I said I can’t drive this on the roads here, we have a few hundred miles to drive through jungles, you kidding me? They were pissy about it and we had to wait 3-hours for them to bring another. It wasn’t much better, but a little more tire tread. We drove 150-miles as I kept hearing the rear end develop a louder and louder whirr and more clunking. I called the rental agency from a resort we were staying at, lucky it would be two-days staying there, as it took them that long to bring another vehicle. Yeah, tires were pretty crappy on that one too.

Al in all, it was a driving adventure I got a kick with, somewhat akin to off-roading in some areas. My wife didn’t think so. Good thing I stayed able since her and our daughter can’t drive a manual.
The tires on the rental were a little better than the spare.