Best place to rent a car in Munich and use for travel in Germany &Austria

I always get a price quote from Auto Europe or Kemwel, which are sister companies, US consolidators that work with many European providers. The area around Munich Hbf main train station is one option for picking up a car, but others may have suburban recommendations with less traffic. Use www.viamichelin.com to help plan your driving route/escape from the city.

Your rental car will include all legal minimum liability insurance for damage to other people and vehicles. You will have to choose how much Collision Damage Waiver you want to buy; see http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/car-rental-cdw and other links in that section. The rental car may already have an Austrian highway tax vignette, but if not, you'll have to stop and buy one at the border crossing or nearest gas station.

"We will be traveling from Munich to Salzburg and Vienna then back to Nuremberg and return to Muich. Total of 10 days of travel."

The insurance won't be cheap. BTW, At certain times of the year you'll need to pay for winter tires as well.

Quite a lot of driving for just 10 days. Your destinations are served especially well by trains. Also, once you're in these major destinations, a car is largely unhelpful and will likely remain parked, usually for a fee; you'll likely be using public transport in all 4 of those cities for some sights

A direct train trip between Vienna and Munich goes for €29 per person with advance purchase at DB. The same trip by car takes an additional hour and costs €55 or so for gas alone, never mind parking, vignette fees, rental fee, insurance . Day passes would cover the other train trips inexpensively (figure €30 or so per day for two; the Bavaria Ticket also covers in-city public transport.)

Be very sure that your car has the Vignette before crossing into Austria. I have seen, frequently, little fleets of police cars just on the Austrian side of the border just waiting for cars and trucks without the right sticker in the right place.

If they stop you (or if the cameras doing the same job get you), it isn't cheap or pleasant.

On your way out of Munich, there's several rental agencies in the Hauptbahnhof. That's probably the easiest place to pick up a car.

Regarding insurance, if you rent using Amex AND you have signed up for their extra insurance package in advance, it's a flat fee (around $20) for the entire 10 days of rental rather than a daily fee from the rental company. This triggers every time you rent a car using Amex (certain exclusions like Italy)
Your credit card may have free insurance included -- check to see what's covered and what's not between your auto insurance and the card.

Hi Ron,

We rent cars through www.gemut.com. For insurance (CDW) we use our AmEx card to pay for our car and sign up for their Premium Car Rental Protection Plan which costs $24.99 for the entire rental period, not per day.

Read this for plenty of info on cars and insurance.

http://www.gemut.com/images/stories/report/carrentalspecialreport.pdf

https://www295.americanexpress.com/premium/car-rental-insurance-coverage/home.do

Paul

Hi Ron- just a word of caution when renting from a car rental facility not at an airport in Germany. It is true that you may save some taxes, although the train stations appear to have the extra taxes along with the airports. But in my experience I have sometimes had a "dog with fleas" offered instead of the car I selected (Compact or midsize) at an "offsite" rental location. And sometimes you have to wait 1-2 hours until someone turns a car in as they have none available on their lot. In fact, this happened to me last year in Munich. I waited more than an hour while they acted like they had no reservation (I gave them the reservation number). I finally walked away and caught an S-bahn to the Munich airport and got a nice car for the same rate at the same company I had reserved after I explained what had happened.
As far as insurance goes, the other posters mentioned that liability insurance comes with the car rental. And I always use a credit card that provides free comprehensive insurance so there is no additional insurance charge. I have actually had to use the "free" comprehensive insurance several times- It was a pain to fill out all of the insurance forms but at the end of the day I was not out any money. I can't vouch for the AMEX insurance mentioned by Laura B and Paul- it sounds like just another way to get more money from their customers. I would be interested to talk to someone who had to use the AMEX CDW car insurance to see if it was more user friendly than my experience with the FREE CDW car insurance offered by other credit cards.

As usual, Russ makes some good points against renting a car. If you are just going to the large cities mentioned without any overnight stops inbetween, then it is probably more cost effective to use the excellent train systems. And once you are in these cities you will most likely park your car and use local transportation. Of course you didn't indicate how many is included in "we" which can impact the cost of train tickets.

At any rate, have a wonderful trip!!!