OMG...brand new car rental!

I think the car rental companies get a good discount when buying loads of cars.

I use Arnold Clark here in Edinburgh a lot and they never have cars more than 6 months old, often had a brand new car with just delivery mileage on it.As a regular customer I often get upgraded and one time got a brand spanking new Audi A4 when I was expecting a class 2 car.
yes ,don't ding the car.

Sounds wonderful!! Enjoy tooling around in the south of France in "your" new car Nicole!!

Is it the Fiat 500X or the little 500 (Luigi)? Either one I had one in France and loved that car. I’d buy one in a second at home,,,but of course we wont get the really economical diesel version. I got 49MPG (yes I converted it all out)

Have fun with it! Europe car did only a cursory walk around and look inside when I brought mine back to Paris. I did wash it and vacuum it out before so it looked great going up the driveway.

Hope you bought full coverage insurance to go with it.

Nice!

I'm a Hertz Gold member and travel frequently for work. I've gotten several cars with <2K, the last one just three weeks ago. It's always nice, but I'm with you; I don't want to be the first get a door ding on it.

My local Hertz office has started a new program when I pick up a car. We walk around it together and they take iPad photos of any blemishes. These are attached to the checkout paperwork.

It is all yours.. Cannot blame the previous driver.

It’s the 500X. It’s a zippy thing, for sure. I do find the seat uncomfortable after a bit, and there is a weird big gap between the seat and door arm rest (I’m talking passenger side). I feel like I have to lean over to rest my arm on the arm rest...it’s a bit off. So that convinced me we don’t need to buy one when we get home...lol. (We will be in the market for a new used car next month, but we like our SUV’s...maybe a Mazda 5 or a Jeep Cherokee).

Have you used the sun visor yet? Laughably useless.

Karen...I Did use the sun visor yesterday...I think for the time of day/angle of the sun, it worked, but yes, upon reflection, it is laughably small.

The other questionable thing...I guess if we owned it, we would use the engine stop when idling feature. Luckily, we were able to turn it off. Not far out of Nice, we got caught in a jam up with 8 lanes of cars (at the ticket booth) trying to get into 2/3 lanes (there was an accident ahead messing it up). So of course, in a jam, everyone is stop/start...inching forward...and in the engine off mode...when you go from brake to gas, the car rolls back a few inches...we were worried someone behind moving forward was gonna be too close and ding. So we turned it off. I imagine if we owned the car and used it constantly, you’d be used to it. But in a car you aren’t used to, not a good thing. Hubby is still trying to give me whiplash when he touches the brakes when parking.

I wonder how many dings the rental places actually get in their own parking garages. My hubby is of average build. He couldn’t get in the drivers side at all when we picked it up, and could barely fit into the passengers side, then of course had to crawl over the console. The guys who park the cars must be able to teleport out of the car once parked. (Yes, I realize there probably wasn’t a car beside it when they parked).

But having a car in Provence is invaluable for us. Yesterday we got to Les Baux early, did the lumieres, headed to St Rémy for some wandering and shopping, then didn’t have any other plans, so decided to head to Arles for supper. Today is Isle sur la Sorgue, Gordes, the Bories, Abbaye Senaque and Roussillon. Try doing all that with public transport.

We rented from Europecar in Frankfurt last month and had a brand new car too. After 20 days and over 2800 km we returned it without a scratch! Huge sigh of relief after some very narrow streets and lots of construction on the autobahn!

I never ever take any additional coverage on a rental car. Rental car insurance is nothing more than a profit center which makes them as much as renting cars. (If not more) I buy the add on insurance from American Express, and strangely enough when I mention this at the car rental office the push to sell me their insurance stops immediately.

The Fiat I rented in France was brand new and it did get a door ding on it when I had it. But it was ignored by Europcar. It was not big and did not scratch the paint but it was a noticeable dent.

I never noticed the issue with the visors mine were fine, maybe because I like to sit higher in the seat??

And just a note; While Avis here in Sofia Bulgaria told me they would have to put a hold on my card for the entire cost of the car, I then told them in an offhand way OK but I have this special AMEX insurance I paid for...the hold when executed was only $1400 dollars including the rental cost. When I get my emailed account snapshots from Amex these never show up.

My first car was a Fiat Coupe in 1970. I had some issues with it from the get-go. It was new and cost a little ove 2 grand! Hopefully the years have resulted in a better product. Ever hear that FIAT means Fix it Again Tony? 😉

I typically rent from National and Alamo because we can select the vehicles we want as you walk the parking lot from the class of vehicle reserved. New models (mileage under 500 miles) can be part of the mix. Not a fan of Fiats however -- Fix It Again Tony, as mentioned above, is the acronym that is the brand calling card. That said, I've never seen Fiats at domestic car rental parking lots. :-)

.maybe a Mazda 5 or a Jeep Cherokee)

Nicole, we have a Mazda 5 and love it! It gets great reviews for a reason. We’re an all Mazda household, we have a 1998 B3000 pickup (Truck), a 2002 Miata (Sadie), a 2015 Miata (Sophie) and the 2017 CX 5 (Socks).

Most Car rental companies don’t buy cars they Lease them. And if they do buy them it is usually through a separate Leasing Company/Corp affiliated with them and they lease from them.

It’s sad that so many Americans have this disdainful view of some European brands and hang on to memories of cars from 40 years ago. Things have changed All cars have gotten better. Some of the European brands that Americans love to snipe at like Citroen, Peugeot and Fiat were pioneers in car technology that American cars did not adapt until years later.

All 3 of the brands above are making great cars. Some of the models much better in many ways than what we get from our Big Three manufacturers. There are of course some not so good models among the lot but those exist at home too. I believe Fiat is the largest car maker in Europe now and making really good cars.

It’s sad that so many Americans have this disdainful view of some
European brands and hang on to memories of cars from 40 years ago.

It's not a European disdain of vehicles from decades past. My husband and I avoid some F ound O n R oad D ead vehicles too.

Dougmac...before our Ford Escape we had a Mazda Tribute (wish they still made those) and we also have a Mazda B3000 (04). We bought it second hand and have had it (apparently) 10 years...and that thing is a work horse...haven’t put too much money into it in the 10 yrs, and the body is in excellent shape for our winters and salt and rust that comes with that. Compared to the tribute, which rusted out under the decorative side panels (but we didn’t have to do too many repairs before the body failed), and this darn ford, which is costing more and more to repair.

We just used our Amex for the rental. Unfortunately, in Canada they don’t offer the additional insurance purchase (I called them and asked and they didn’t know what I was talking about). I know they did offer it in 2015. Last time, we got a scrape on the car and Amex reimbursed us. The guy at the rental place asked if we wanted the extra insurance, but we said we were just going to use the Amex and that ended the trying to get us to buy the insurance.

Aarthur- we have real life current experience with the Fiat 500. It has a lot of good points, but car repair bills have been frequent and expensive. A car should not need new tires and brakes at 22,000 miles. It's doing what we bought it to do- take the mileage pressure off of an aging car that we want to keep for a while. But, cheap is cheap. We got what we paid for.

I prefer to get a somewhat well-used car, and that's what I normally get in France. That way it's possible that any dings I put on it will get overlooked amongst the other dings. In my recent rental, the car (through Hertz) had more scratches and dings than usual. When I backed into a wall and badly scraped the bumper, I thought maybe it would get lost in all the other scrapes, but the rental agent noticed it immediately. Happily, for the first time ever I had taken full coverage, at a really reasonable price, and I never saw a charge on my credit card for the damage.

Just an update...we turned the car in yesterday and I didn't want to jinx it beforehand...no dents or scratches or dings! Yay. And we had no issues returning at Nice airport (just don't miss the little entrance for the car return garage...we got it on the first go)...there is even a conveniently placed gas station a minute away to fill er up.