Cost of a Rental Car?????

Tolls and gas will depend on where you're driving. ViaMichelin will tell you how much you will spend on fuel and tolls on your route. Parking? Depends on where you park and if there's a charge. Who could know that? Insurance? Depends on what you choose. Credit card coverage? CDW? I have only gotten the CDW in Ireland and Italy because it was required. In other countries I have used coverage through my travel insurance. This year I will use the American Express coverage,

Although I have kept track of car costs for the 3 trips where we used one for a substantial amount of time, they are truly apples and oranges. It all depended on how much we drove and when and where we rented the car. Some shorter rentals were more expensive than the longer ones.

We go for a month. We have never rented a car for an entire month, though. I put the costs in the "ground transportation" category on my trip accounting spreadsheet. These are good guesses, but not perfect because I'm sure I didn't capture everything. So far we have only rented through Gemut.com and paid for the car before we left the US.

2011 -- Picked up car in Stuttgart. Returned it back to Germany, just over the border with Basel. Drove it in Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France. Total cost -- $925. Total days rental -- 12. Pricey, but this part of that trip was all about driving in the Alps.

2012 -- Picked up car in Reims. Returned it in Aix-en-Provence. Drove it only in France. Reims -- Verdun -- Giverny -- Le Mans -- Aix-en-Provence. Most parking free or part of hotel price. Total cost -- $700. Total days rental -- 14. Without the car, we would never have stumbled on the little back road Go Kart track where my husband learned that the French kart tracks are much more interesting than any he has driven in the US and the karts are much more powerful.

2013 -- Unusual for us, we picked up the car and returned it to the Amsterdam airport. Drove in the Netherlands and Belgium. Some parking using metered spaces on the streets near our hotels or apartments. Some free. Total cost -- $675. Total days rental -- 20. Why in the world would anyone rent a car in these countries? So we could drive from Zandvoort to Arnhem via the northern route. So that we could go to Keukenhof and Haarlem on our own schedule and park free for the flower parade. So that when my husband got sick and we had to give up our reservations in Stavelot, we could later drive from Bruges to Spa Francorchamps for a walking tour of my husband's favorite Formula 1 racetrack and easily get back to Bruges in the same day.

We don't do it to save money. We do it for the utility, freedom and convenience -- and because we like to drive. Our trips anywhere are not about being in one place and then in another. They are also about how we get to those places and what we see along the way.

@Lo, thank you. That was the sort of thing I was looking for. I have avoided renting a car for the last dozen years (except once in S. Africa for the World Cup – expensive disaster) because I thought it might just be more money than I wanted to spend and more hassle than I wanted to endure.. But I knew the decision was resulting in some lost experience. I keep seeing posts by people I respect who rent cars and drop really reasonable costs so I thought I would recheck my thinking. I didn’t ask about any place or route in particular because we do a lot of traveling and I was looking more for a gut idea.

Your experiences run from about $40 to $80 a day, but you say you don’t do it to save money; but with results like that I would consider that I was saving money. I am more than half convinced that I need to make renting a car part of the planning equation.

Did things go smoothly with the rental companies? I know even in the US car rental companies advertise a cheap rate then try to stick it to you when you go to pick up the car. Is there a pan-European company you had good results with?

Again, thank you.

Hi James,
We've rented cars for the past 2 European vacations. I also keep a planning budget spreadsheet so these are fairly accurate.

1) 2011 italy- Picked car up when we flew into Frankfurt and drove from Germany through Switzerland to Italy, dropped car off in Florence 13 days later. Rental cost was $1225.00-paid in advance through Gemut.com. We used our American Express so covered through AX insurance. We drove around 1200 miles over the 2 weeks, so maybe around $250-300 in gas. I only recall a toll driving over the bridge to Venice, then parking for 2 days.

The reason we elected to rent a car (with a hefty one way fee) was not due to saving money, but flexibility. First, we needed a car for the 2nd week as we rented a farmhouse near Cortona, but off the beaten path. Secondly, we wanted to go from Fussen to Lake Como, and the train routes and schedules did not appear feasible in one day. So we drove from Fussen though Switzerland to Veranna, and this one day drive was one of the highlights of our vacation.
My husband had a little encounter with a brick wall when attempting to back up with with stick shift, but Eurocar didn't notice or care when we turned car in.

2) 2013 Italy- Of the two week trip, we only needed a car for the 3 nights in Montelcino. So we rented in LaSpezia after CT, then 4 days later dropped it off in Orvieto. With the car we were able to visit Volterra and San Giamignano, vistied several wineries around Montalcino. Cost for this rental inclusive of CDW for 4 days was Kemwel, paid in advance, gas maybe another $50-75. No parking costs.
Again problem with different brick wall attempting to back up. Since we had the super cover, Hertz noticed scrape, but we were covered.

3) Scotland -Sept 2014- After our stay in Edinburgh, we plan to rent a car to explore Scotland, then drive to York. 9 days rental through Kemwel is $236 (prepaid) , drop fee of $85 extra). Using credit card for insurance coverage.

Since we tend to spend more time outside of big cities, we enjoy the flexibility of a car, and short road trips between destinations. We take our time, stop along the way, and enjoy the scenery. The most time we spend in a car getting from point A to B is 4-5 hours. And if day tripping, anything more than 45 minutes or an hour one direction is too much time in a car. As we approach our small town destinations, we read RS books for parking advice, and would rather park and walk with our carryon luggage, not try to drive all the way to hotel. After two Italy trips, no ZTL violations, no speeding tickets.

GPS is essential! But even with a GPS, have a map, so in the event GPS is not up to date with new road construction, you know what cities you are heading towards.

As I mentioned before and in many other (some recent) posts, I have always gone through Gemut.com. This is the link: http://www.gemut.com/. Andy there seems to be able to find better deals than I can find even using their online search system.

We really don't care what agency we end up with, but (Ed will hate to hear this) EuropeCar via AutoEurope has been the only one so far due to price and location. Andy has handled all that for us and we just end up with the contract. As far as we can tell, we are not charged anything extra for the service. Just as an FYI, our experience has been that some countries charge extra for a 2nd driver even if they are the spouse and some don't. It's a good idea to be sure to use the CC of the primary driver to pay for the car, because you might get charged extra upfront or at return if someone else pays for it.

Be sure to download and thoroughly read the booklet, What You Should Know About Renting a Car in Europe for answers to almost all your questions.

As I said, the cost isn't a big issue with us, but it is somewhat relevant because if we were going to strictly compare it to other forms of European transportation, we have to factor in that we are 2 people. The car doesn't care, but the train/bus/plane sure does.

Update based on what Karen said: The costs I listed do include speeding tickets in France and Switzerland. So far nothing from anywhere else.

We have rented in England a couple of times, Ireland once...Mexico a half dozen times.

For England, It was a few days down to Portsmouth, adding in Stonehenge, so public transport would have been a bit time consuming. In the end, for less than $200, it was more cost effective as well, but I had no parking fees, Insurance was less than $30 through AMEX, and as far as I know, no tickets. We dropped the car before heading to London.

Same theme on other trips, Car Rental was only for a short period of the whole trip, basically where a car allows freedom of movement where Public Transport is slow or scarce (Cornwall in England, Ireland outside of Dublin) Ireland probably would have been cheaper by public transport if available, the killer there is insurance.

My general rule is exactly that...will a car offer me more than what I can get from public transport? That generally tends to be in areas where transport options are limited, and parking/tolls and other fees are limited, including Insurance. I doubt that I would even consider renting for transport between major cities, parking becomes an issue, tickets a greater risk, and maybe risk to damage is greater. A car can just be a big pain in a metro area.

I also prefer to rent for limited segments, renting form and taking the car back to the same location, switching back to trains or bus to get to another area. That cost formula may change if 4 people were travelling vs 2.

Based on about a quarter million miles in Europe, about the same in Asia, less than half that in Africa. Maybe fifty thousand in Australia and New Zealand, possibly less. South America doesn't count since I own a couple of cars there so rentals would be sparse. All numbers spread over the past forty-five years.

Where: everywhere I go unless my wife wants the car for a week or so and I get stuck with a train.

Frequency: about six months out of the year, somewhere, including a little in the US.

Rental cost: $20-$25 per day.

Insurance cost: zero except in nations not covered by credit card.

For Europe:

Typical annual time in Europe/UK is two to three months.

Budgeted total car cost per day is fifty bucks, not often hit, only exceeded once or twice.

Experience in every nation except Macedonia. Preponderance of experience in UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Benelux, and Scandinavia.

Typical average distance is one hundred miles per day, typical trip is thirty days.

Fuel currently runs eight bucks plus per gallon and small cars typically get about forty per -- call it twenty cents per mile.

Tolls are where you find them.

Minimal rental period is two weeks, normally one month. Short-term rentals up the daily rate.

Normally the smallest, cheapest thing available.

Urban parking runs about twenty-five bucks a day, but I don't have much of it.

World Factoids:
Worst roads -- scattered in Andes and a couple in western China.
Worst driving cities -- Tokyo, Cairo, Calcutta.
Most maddening parking city -- London.