[rangaraj]

Hi,

Over the years, i have rented many a car in driven primarily in the US and occassionaly in Europe. Here is a quick snapshot of some of the cars that i remember driving..

1. Mer C class - My first drive in Germany and a collegue and i landed at the Hertz rental place in Frankfurt and our customer had arranged for a compact car for us! Here were two indians with large suitcases and the plan was to pickup a collegue who was coming in from france and spend a few days working across various spots in germany. We decided to upgrade and the only car that they had was a C class Merc so reluctantly (;-)..) we said OK and i tool controls of this black beauty. Our first stop was near Villingen in the black forest area. I have always sat cabs and zipping at close to 200kmph (first time that i have actually seen the needle touching the maximum limit of a speedometer - its a joke when a 800 has speeds till 200kmp on their dials!) and it was my opportunity to drive for the first time with no speed limit. You hardly realize the speed, but i self imposed a speed limit of 160-170kmph and thats when you realize the capabilities of these german cars.. A pair of xenon lamps appear in your rear view mirror and you better move towards a slower lane (while travelling at 170kmph!) and boy the porche's and other cars zip by you as though you are standing still. These speeds surprisingly do not seem to come down even when it is raining! As you can gather, i truely enjoyed my driving around for 4 days on the autobahns! Let me move on..

2. In another holiday, i hired a corsa in portugal as it was just my wife and i and we decided to drive around the coutry in around 10 days time - no agenda, stay where we liked, or moved on to the next intersting place. Again the comfort of driving the corsa @ 120-130kmph on their equivalent of autobahn's was a great experience and the car was really stable. I got into trouble in one spot as i could not figure out how to put the car in reverse gear! Luckily for me, another tourist who was also driving a corsa (and who had the same problem) showed how it was done.. The car is great for city driving especially with narrow streets and tight parking spots. Would recommend it as a good rental car to anyone..

3. Moving onto the US - the cars i have hired from Hertz and Avis are:
Interesting: Ford Mustang
OK: SUV's - Ford Explorer, Huyndai Santafe, and a few others that i cant remember. The larger SUV's drink gas like crazy! I thought the explorer had all the comfort and feeling of a car, but was a small (by US standards) and easy to drive. The pontiac's are decent.. Driven the sonata and an occassional toyota camry, ford
Boooorrrrrriiiinnngg: Pretty much all the GM cars (cheverlot and Buicks) - I rent with Avis a lot and boy, some of the full size cars they upgade me to make me feel like a 70 year old with traditional steering column attached gear lever and single front seats (no bucket seats ala our good old ambassador style).

I prefer the Avis Assist (GPS enabled direction finder) vs. Hertz NeverLost (though i did get lost on quite a few occassions). The satellite radio - XM is great!

The two best vehicles i have driven are: A friend 7 series BMW and a Lexus SUV..

[ajmat]

Originally Posted by rangaraj

The two best vehicles i have driven are: A friend 7 series BMW and ..

Sometimes on a sunny day, you can find a blue one parked opposite your apartment

As a matter of coincidence - Ranga is a neighbour of mine who m I figured out through a little bit of deduction

[asit]

we normally take cars from national

i drove the chrysler pacifica recently

it was too luxurious
nice suv but doesnt have that fun to drive touch to it

[tsxei]

Ok ok my turn
These are the cars/SUVs/crossovers I remember driving as rentals
Pontiac - Grand AM, Bonneville, Vibe
Toyota - Corolla
Ford - Escape, Focus, Mustang
Mazda - MPV
Jeep - Grand Cherooke

The ones I really liked are
Pontiac Vibe - for its car like refinement with SUV like utility capabilities. I drove up a mountain in this in California.
Ford Escape - really good looking small SUV.
Jeep Grand Cherooke - I got a brand new one. I braved the Canadian snow in this one.
Ford Mustang - liked it only because it was a convertible.

[lamborghini]

We generally rent a car from whoever offers us a big roomy car for the best price.
Some cars i remember are -
Ford Focus Hatch (Spain) - That was a wild car. There were like 3 families travelling and between us we had 2 ford focus hatch backs, and 1 Seat Station Wagon. That time we didn't carry lot of luggage and the car was perfect. My dad loved driving it, i loved the looks and space in the backseat but i found the design of the interiors wierd but i kinda like it. It was my first time in the Focus.

Ford Focus Sedan (Turkey) - We had rented this car for a 1000 km drive from Istanbul to a resort aclled Lykia world, near the blue lagoon.
This was the only car in which all our luggage fit. there were just the 4 of us, my mom, dad, sister and me. By then i had matured a bit and quite liked the interior design.

Ford Focus Station Wagon (Turkey) - What to say? My dad just loves the Focus now and i am quite confident he would get one if it were to be launched in India. Anyway, this was a white coloured Focus Station Wagon, 2001 build that we were going to use to tour the rest of Turkey. It had covered 90Kkm of abusive use aswe figured out when we sat inside. It looked like a 1.6/1.8 model as the max speed on the dial was 220 like the Ikons. While i don't have anything else to say about the car as i have covered it all, i just want to add that after 90Kkm, with 4 adults, 4 big bags, the car still managed to touch a 180 kmph for a few seconds until my mom intervened but 160 was quite common.

Well,
that is it for now as i have to go.
More later.

[ajmat]

For me

UK - FOrd Focus - one of the best handling fwd cars I have driven - got one in 1999 when it first cameout but was rather jiggly. Used another in 2001 which was pretty good
UK - Ford Fiesta - okay car - Ikon with a chopped tale + zetec engine - never pushed the car as I used it for work in London - biggest joke on that was I hired one for 3 days for 70 pounds, then decided to extend the period to 10days and they still charged me 70 pounds and insisted that this was correct. I love their lack of out of the box thinking)
Alfa 145 - quirky but good fun - Holland - Sixt
Fiat Brava - UK, Holland - okay - nice engine, one of them had only 6 miles on the clock
Fiat Marea - Holland - as above but a diesel station wagon - good cruiser
Skoda Fabia 1.9sdi -uk- not bad - very slow but once it gathers steam, it's fine - i actually enjoyed it. very stable
Opel Vectra -uk- boring - good motorway cruiser
Toyota Camry- US - good engine but is wobbles like an automotive blamanche - just cannot take curves
Ford Escort Vans - used for moving house etc - great fun - through it around without a care
Ford Escort 1.6 auto - by far the worst ever car that I ever drove

[lamborghini]

Let me continue mine -
Nissan Primera (Scotland) - We had rented the nissan and a Mitsubishi Outlander. They were both quite cool but the Mitsubishi drank more and was slower though it came handy while loading up. The MID system in the Nissan was a very nice touch.

ATV (Scotland) - This has to be my fav. vehicle i have ever rented. It is a 4WD scooter mated to 4 wheels. We rented it for an hour and went offroading. It was a lot of fun and though i started last, i finished quite a bit before the others and mine was the dirtiest. Me and my friend also had a slight accident when i was turning and he banged into me. Got cut on my hand. It was realy cool when we splashed through the water and all our engines started smoking.

Mercedes Benz V Class (France) - This was an awesome car. I really liked it. We had rented it from SIXT and it is def. better then the Viano.
However it is also the easiest to break into as we found out as it took 5 miutes for car theives to break into the car, steal our passports, credit cards, money, travellers checks, cameras and the cops weren't of a great help either.
Also, the OVRM was hit and broken which took 3 - 4 hours to repair but i wasn't complaining because i ot to sit in all the merc cars in the Showroom. and i had my friends for company (we generally travel with friends).Oh and when we went to Paris a few days earlier then scheduled, i went to the auto museum there, saw quite a few cool cars and got a few keychains which were sold off with the cars.

Along with these we have rented VW Sharan, Toyota MUVs, The espace which were also very good.

[Abhay]

Okay here are cars I have rented out of India...

UK - Renault Clio 1.2 from Enterprise
Lovely small hatch and I had the a great drive right from the South Coast to the Lake District ....which itself is amazing....was one heck of a car too although not too powerful but roomy and very good.

US- I rented cars almost every week-end when I was there for a few weeks ...all from Hertz

Chevy Cavalier - crap

Ford Taurus - had rented a small/economy car but they upgraded me to fullsize.....whale sized and I had a flat at 70mph on an interstate.

Chevy Impala - another whale but I got it intentionally to transport huge amount of luggage to the airport (me and 2 colleagues)

Toyota Corolla - best of the lot and a fun car to drive as well.

Hyundai Elantra 2.0 - I had this car for a month and it was a nice car although I still hate its looks but after driving it so much I enjoyed it too

Ford Focus ZX4 - another good car to drive and had this one for 3 weeks and did a lot of driving in it (especially in the mountains where it was a bit breathless)