How far in advance do you book rental car?

With Autoeurope you can book, cancel and rebook at a lower rate. That said, I wouldn't expect a rental car company to have rates posted that far out in advance. There is no way it would be 35,000 euros

I was able to change my Avis reservation free of charge a few weeks in advance. 6 months in advance seems excessive. I don't see why you'd need to reserve that early.

It used to be that renting a manual was half the price of renting an automatic in Europe because automatic was so rare, but that's no longer the case -- automatic transmission accounts for 75% of new cars in Europe now. There is still somewhat of a premium, but nothing like what it was just 10 years ago.

And if you are renting from Rome, check out this tip I posted recently: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/tip-for-car-rental-in-rome

I wasn't going to actually book it yet, but was just trying to get an idea on what it would cost that time of year. When it said none available, I started thinking perhaps they're all booked already, so tried searching that month in 2025. That's when I got the insane price listing. I just want to get a ballpark estimate on cost for 2 weeks and where they have automatics in stock so I can finalize our route. I've read a lot of posts on here about people reserving automatics and then ending up being told nothing available. Was originally planning to rent from Orvieto, but saw another thread mentioned that the Hertz there has had issues.

Make sure you are searching for pick up/drop off within the agencies open hours
Most all closed Sunday
Close by noon or 1 on Saturday
Closes mid day 12-4 ish

When I see a rate I like I book
With AutoEurope you do pay at booking but you can cancel rebook as often as you like if you see better rate
So keep checking

Agencies in small towns are less likely to have automatic
Agencies in Florence-train station locations- will always have automatic

I was able to pull up many options for automatic for the last 2 weeks of June 2024. Try again and pick Florence all locations (last option). Sometimes the site can be picky. Try a different computer/device if it's still giving you an error. If I see a good price, I will book far in advance, just making sure cancellation is free.

I always use AutoEurope and always rent manual transmission cars (all my cars in the US are manual as well) so I can’t advise on where you could find an automatic more easily, but a major city like Florence, with so many American visitors many of whom notoriously can’t drive manual cars, will have them available at both the city center locations and the airport. I often fly to Florence (and I go once or twice a year) so my pick up location is either the Florence airport or the downtown location (whichever works best for the specific time I go and the price I get). I noticed that prices are high if you check too far in advance on AutoEurope, so I generally rent no sooner than 30 to 60 days in advance. Unfortunately, over the years, I’ve had various major family emergencies, or family deaths, that forced me to fly and reserve a car just 24 hours in advance. The AutoEurope staff has always been super helpful in all those tragic circumstances and got me the car I needed the very next day by the time I landed. Incredibly enough, those were the times when the prices were cheapest, even for an SUV which could handle snow driving, go figure. Prices generally rise dramatically after July 1, so make sure you pick up the car before June 30. Assuming you know your plans more in advance than I sometimes had to go, I would look into renting about a month to two months prior. As I said you can get a car even the next day, and what drives the price with AutoEurope is the month you rent (very high in July and early August) and where (very high in the Italian islands in summer, for example) not so much how far in advance you rent.

You will save a bundle if you rent a manual transmission car (it is also next to impossible to rent a small economy car with auto transmission in Europe, therefore you will necessarily have to rent a compact or larger car to hope to get one with auto transmission). Therefore, since you seem to have several months before you travel, I suggest you find a friend or relative with a manual transmission car that can teach you (maybe I should start offering those classes to the Rick Steves’ folks).

I've read it's best to have a small car in Italy, but if we only plan to drive in the countryside, then would a mid size be ok? I got on again this morning and saw there are some options now but mid size is much cheaper. Else we're looking at about $2,000 minimum for 2 weeks.

We were hoping to rent in Perugia maybe, and drop off in Lucca, that way we would only have the car when in the country to save money. I don't really want to have to change our itinerary just to be able to go back to pick up the car in Florence, but then this is exactly why I'm trying to get this sorted out first!

We cannot drive manual. No one here has one and the driving schools don't teach it anymore, so I'm not comfortable trying to learn on the fly, and my daughter is a new driver to begin with.

You are looking way too early for 2025; current quotes are irrelevant.
Have a look at, say, May 2024 rates to get a better idea.

Look at prices for this coming spring. But even then is too early. AutoEurope doesn’t secure their contracts so much in advance. Look at around Christmas and see. It’s a holiday period and maybe it would have prices comparable to June 2024.
You should be able to find an auto transmission car in Perugia. If you click on the auto transmission car box in the AutoEurope website it will quote you that type of car, it will be higher in price, of course and the smallest will be a compact or midsize. You can rent any size you feel comfortable with, I usually rent a compact Crossover/SUV like a Jeep Compass, which Stellantis makes in Italy for the EU market, therefore are very common.

Like Jules m, I book about 5 months out then rebook as rates go lower. I’ve rebooked 4 or 5 times for a few trips with the final rental price being about 50% of the original quoted price. There area lot of factors that affect price, where and when you rent, how long you rent for, who you rent from, manual vs automatic transmission, and size vehicle are the major ones. Earlier this year our rental from Frankfurt, excluding insurance, was 910€ for 21 days while our rental in Madrid for the same amount of time was 515€. Both reservations were for a compact SUV size vehicle, manual transmission, through Enterprise.