Rental car from Italy to France

Unless you need the car in France, why would you do that? I have driven from Italy to France, Austria, Germany and Switzerland with no issue but it was too long ago for me to say whether you would run into anything now.

There is nothing to worry about crossing the border but dropping in a different country incurs a very high drop off fee

It really depends on the particulars—there’s a fee but in certain cases it is deemed worthwhile. Tell us all the details and we can offer suggestions.

It's all Europe, so crossing isn't the issue, but it's usually expensive to rent in one country and drop off in another. Why not just take the train?

The best way is just to do a sample rental and see what the drop off fee would be.

I did a sample rental with SIXT, the company I use. Renting in Barcelona, Spain, airport, dropping off at Perpignan SNCF.

The problem is not any drop-off fee, it is the daily fee for a cross-border drop off.....in other words, they are not charging a drop-off fee, they are just raising the price of the daily rental...by several multiples.

I only tried one routing, so maybe it's much different with other companies.

hey hey davidmnewman
welcome to the forum
the hassles may not be at the border, but crossing from one country to another, most likely a big fee. had friends rent a car in st jean pied de port french basque region where friends have family several years ago, drove to barcelona which charged them $900 drop-off fee. they were so shocked, had no clue about it and just paid it. take a train close to border with rental return, taxi or train across to other country and rent again.
you will need to get an IDP (aaa.com/IDP) which is mandatory in italy, use it along with your DL. read the laws, rules, ZTL's, do's and dont's, parking places which is a PITA in many cities/towns, gas-petrol cost, etc, vouchers if needed, going thru toll booths (cash/credit card. need more info like others have posted here. as ekscrunchy says do a "dummy" reservation , you can use autoeurope.com or sixt.com so you know far ahead of time what you are up against. do your research, people here are giving you good bad and ugly scenarios to make you aware. have a great trip & enjoy
aloha

a few more details would help a whole lot.

If we had a clue about pick up city or region and drop off city or region, and cities to be visited by car we could a great deal more.

France and Italy have driving laws which are similar but with enough differences to count.

What other countries will you drive in on the way? Switzerland? Austria? Slovenia? Germany? There things to know about each. Even Monaco has a different law or two.

Vignettes and city/town centre laws are important

France and Germany (among others) have environmental laws that affect you.

So please fill us in a bit more.

It’s not difficult to rent in Italy and return it in France. The difficult thing may be having to separate yourself from the huge amount of money in your wallet to pay for the international one way drop off fee.

Thanks to everyone for your advice.