Random Rental Car Reviews

2015 Nissan Rogue: UGH. CVT kills any chance of fun, and there's not much chance since the engine is LAZY. Fairly comfortable and quiet though.

2015 Ford Focus: Auto starts off like a newby learning to drive stick. Once it's going it's all good though. Feels planted, decent power and returned 40mpg over long distances.

2014 Dodge Challenger: Got the V6, but still wasn't disappointed. It's HUGE, but small inside. Pretty quiet, great highway cruiser. Huge. Did I mention it feels huge? SWMBO liked the legroom.

Stealthtercel wrote: AFAIK if your Impala has the 3.6 it also has a six-speed auto. Sounds like you have one that's led a hard life. How many miles on it?

No, the 21mpg average is normal for the 3.6L cars. I dealt with a ton of customers who traded in their old 3900 cars and were in at the first oil change complaining about the mileage. Then you show them that they are factory-rated at 22mpg average and they complain that it's worse. Well, shoulda looked at the fuel mileage rating before you bought the car.

2015 nissan versa - CVT ruined any fun and terribly slow

2015 ford fiesta - peppy and handled amazing

2015 chevy camaro v6 vert - surprisingly fast with no problem pulling from 80 to 130 on open desert highways, handles decent if you aren't pushing it to 10/10th's, when pushed to hard on tight corners it understeered badly. also the paddle shift shifted resonably quick but not as fast as i would like but it did hold each gear really well with on and off power.

I tend to end up in compacts/subcompacts a lot, with the occasional larger vehicle.

Chevy Sonic: surprisingly, it's my favorite, although I probably wouldn't own one. Reasonably comfortable and rides well for such a small car. Drivetrain isn't great, but it's predictable.

Nissan Versa Note: Seats are too uncomfortable, like they were made for a very skinny and short person.

Nissan Micra: Surprisingly better than the Versa, although a lot less powerful.

Fiat 500: (disclosure, I daily drive an Abarth). The older ones are awful, but I recently drove a 2015 model, and the transmission has been greatly improved. The new digital dash is nice, too, wish I had it on my car. Still needs more power.

Dodge Grand Caravan: Comfortable and more power than a minivan should have. Not as fun to park in Canada where the parking spaces are a bit smaller than in the US.

Jeep Wrangler Unlimited: I think they just wanted to get this off the lot to someone. This thing is pretty useless in the city and suburbs. Kind of neat anyway, but if they try to give one to me again, I'm asking for something else.

Subaru Outback - Possibly the biggest POS I have ever driven. You give it commands like a fully-laden steam tramp and responds as sluggishly, the CVT is a complete joke (clunks all the time, winds the motor up to redline but never actually accelerates, completely ignores manual "paddle shifter" inputs, noisy as all get out), the motor is thrashy unrefined and gutless, there is, I kid you not, 27 buttons on the flipping steering wheel, and the suspension can best be described as "crashy".

2015 Ford F-150 Super Crew 3.5TT EcoBoost - Holy berking E36M3, this thing hauls! This motor is scary good, just mounds of torque, instant response, and this is stock! Forget the 2.3T, THIS is the motor that should be in the Mustang! Wicked good truck. Rides nice, can't tell the body is aluminum, tons of features and they all work. I actually considered buying one it's so good. Best rental ever.

Javelin wrote: Did I mention that it has FOUR forward gears?!?!

and that surprises you how ?

Mom's '12 Fit is, for all intents and purposes, a 3 speed automatic ... though it does have OD = 4 sp, and when conditions allow, torque converter lockup = 5 sp

but still a 3 sp ...

I worked moving rental cars at an airport for 10 months. I'm amazed that any of them run, period. The things that get done to them is incredible, and it's all about the turnover, cars in the lot do not make money. I threatened to write up a Ford Focus for repair because it actually ran and shifted, unlike the other 50 on the lot. I figured the customers would be confused if one actually ran well. Once or twice a week, we would have to swap some cars with other local airports. That meant looking for the biggest piles of E36M3 to dump on someone else, while receiving their E36M3 piles. In defense of the people who worked there, the "service agents" a.k.a. car washers had roughly 6 minutes to remove the damage from the previous driver and "detail" it. The car wash would spit parts out like seeds at a watermelon eating contest. The higher paid people actually got over federal minimum wage. If a car was really beat, we would shift it to the Cheap Charlie rental company that was a division of the major firm. I used to call it "Bent Buckled and Distorted Car Rental."

I had been meaning to post a review of the 2014 Nissan Sentra, the nicest Cavalier you can buy today, but had hadn't had the time until now. In October the wife and I took a very brief but pricey trip out west. Late Sunday night we landed in Las Vegas and were taken out to the rental garage where we were handed the keys to a gray Sentra. I got in and felt eerily at home, like when Al Bundy traded in his short lived Pacer for "another" Dart and it even had the radio set to his stations. After a few minutes I realized why. It was patterned after a 1990's Chevy Cavalier. The same awful feeling cloth, rubbery Nerf based steering wheel, even similar sharp mold parting seams on the hard plastic bits. I even came into the car under similar circumstances. I needed a car and didn't want to spend any money. We left the airport and experienced the same buzzy shaking under acceleration and a familiar rattle from all the interior panels as we got up to speed. It even had a piece on the center console that dug into my fat right leg. Had my wife not broken her arm and needed to go home for surgery there is a good chance two weeks of driving this car would have been the worst part of my trip.

I was nervous when we pulled up to the hotel Priceline put us in. In what I assume was an attempt to make up for the car we were booked in Trump International where I hoped we were late enough that The Donald wouldn't come out and berate our little car calling it an embarrassment and throwing us off his property. Fortunately it was still there in the morning and we were able to hit the road. The radio was full of static and never got loud enough to drown out the drivetrain or tire noise. About the time we made it to Rt 66 we got a bit more nostalgia then we planned for. We started blowing cigarette lighter fuses every so often. I don't think I needed to car spare pieces on a vacation in 20 years. Oddly as suddenly as the problem it started it went away, coincidently as soon as I found a big pack of fuses.

At one point The Wife managed to fall asleep and I had no radio so I pondered why with all the good economy cars out there someone would choose to emulate a 20 year old Chevy Cavalier. I picture it went something like this...

In a boardroom in Yokohama Nissan executives are trying to find a way to compete with Toyota. They head to the parking lot to look at one and the first one they stumble on is an older Toyota Cavalier (yes, it does exist) belonging to one of the night janitors, Yusei parked in the "Employee of the Month" space. Being out of touch like all good executives fail to realize that A: The car they are looking at is the most bizarre of all the badge engineered products to fall off a GM assembly line and B: There is no way Yusei is employee of the month but he once again fell asleep in a broom closet and failed to wake up and go home at the end of his shift.

They are somewhat bemused that this simple shoddily built car is churned out the behemoth corporation beating them so badly in the marketplace and at the same time relived that the bar seems to be set so low. When Yusei returns from his nap he panics to see his car surrounded by higher ups. He is even more worried after they buy his car and have it sent to be studied by the engineering department because even he can tell that if this is car they are planning to copy he will soon be sweeping the unemployment office. The engineers and designers, having been given their latest instructions enjoy light work load and take up golf and watching daytime TV with their new found free time much like the people who gave us the Cavalier in the first place.

edizzle89 wrote: 2015 nissan versa - CVT ruined any fun and terribly slow

I just had a 2015 Nissan Versa 'Note'...apparently the Note is the hatchback. The CVT is garbage and it was slow with 3 middle aged fat guys in it. Having said that I beat on it mercilessly for 1100 miles, it spit out 35mpg and never gave a peep. Priceline put me in it $13 a day and it was worth it.

Ford Focus, probably whatever the cheapest way you can get leather in it.

It was a really nice car. We would have been looking for one if they stuck a decent automatic gearbox behind it--that thing was horrible--but overall it was a great vehicle. Would drive again.

Had a few recently.

2015 Impala LT with the 6 speed and 3.6. Genuinely good highway car, if a little small inside for as big as the body is. Gets up and boogies when you want, and I still got 26 mpg on the highway with it without using cruise control. Black on black, leather was nice, interior quality surprising. Still doesn't handle all that well, mostly due to vague and unpredictable steering, but that's a minor complaint. If I had to drive a lot of highway, I would seriously consider one of these.

2015 Jeep Cherokee Latitude, 3.2 pentastar, 9 speed gearbox. This one would actually make a solid hot hatch with the V6. Decent power and surprisingly good handling, but the interior and infotainment were decidedly low rent. Quiet inside aside from obnoxious high frequency noise that was felt through the wheel and pedals as well, and was severe enough to give me a headache after 6 hours and this weird tingly feeling in my feet. The water temp gauge, which is a series of large white LEDs, would blink up one, then down one, every 45 seconds of so as the thermostat cycled. Very distracting and obnoxious at night, since it's impossible to miss out of the corner of your eye. The seats were pretty bad, the styling in my opinion is terrible, and by far the worst part is the transmission. The engine makes the right noises and good power, but it seems to get lost in the gearbox, which has a strange gear spacing to fit all those ratios, and I never could get it to find a 9th gear. I tried. Would have been better with a 5 or 6 speed with properly spaced gears.

2015 Hyundai Elantra, base 1.8 liter and 6 speed auto. Surprisingly good given the price point. Good enough power, but somewhat thrashy engine. Good trans calibration, and seats that didn't make my back hurt. No telescoping column made the seating position suck, but the column is an option. Eco mode actually works pretty well without killing trans responsiveness when you want it - I got 40 mpg average. Big trunk. Crappy tires meant lots of understeer, and no feel through the electric steering. Poorly calibrated damping on bigger hits, but expected for the price. All around better than I was expecting, and not a bad econobox.

Since October, I have had 2 Fusions, 2 Malibus, and an Expedition.

The Expedition was by far the best. Because I daily a Miata, I always get the biggest honkin' rental cars I'm able. Contrast and all that. I so much fun driving a huge 20-cow interior rainforest dozer with Ecoboost that I made a thread about it.

The Fusions were really nice. My go-to. Drive nice, stereo is easy to navigate, and both had rear view cameras. Nice feature for a car with unfamiliar dimensions.

The Malibus I got because there were not any Fusions on the lot. The first one, I couldn't find the interior trunk release to save my life. The second one, I got simply because I wanted to see if I could find the trunk release without consulting the Internet. After having it a week, I was still unsuccessful. Reverted to the fob every time.

Mitchell wrote: The Malibus I got because there were not any Fusions on the lot. The first one, I couldn't find the interior trunk release to save my life. The second one, I got simply because I wanted to see if I could find the trunk release without consulting the Internet. After having it a week, I was still unsuccessful. Reverted to the fob every time.

I had a Malibu for about 2 weeks whe our truck was in the shop after collecting a deer. I couldn't find an interior release either, but found a rubber nipple above the license plate that opened the trunk after consulting the user manual.