We are on a 2 week road trip in Arizona at the end of July. There’s a reasonable amount of miles involved, but nothing too major, most days aren’t more than a couple of hours in the car.

I’m aware that it’s the height of summer and the desert, so I know the romantic ideal is a soft top and the sensible money is anything with good air-con.

I’d like your recommendations for methods if you have them on getting a decent hire car, my primary concerns are decent motor (ideally a Hemi V8 of with some car around it) but this is difficult to guarantee on a booking site. I may occasionally have a more than one other passenger as there is a group going with a few cars, but no kids to think of and no real need for an SUV as there will be mountain roads so having a tank doesn’t sounds ideal to me.

I’ll be flying in and out of Phoenix if that matters.

So who did you use?
What horror stories of US roads trips do you have.
Which hire companies came through with awesome cars for you?

Would love to hear opinions, actual itinerary is nothing to do with me as it’s all been set by the FiL who has done this all before, but wants us all to go out and join him this time.

avis and i hired a focus – anything decent was spendy and all were low rent models of the cool cars. I had a dodge challenger v6 free upgrade last time i was out there with work – i wasnt impressed enough to hire any american muscle this time as i was actually driving. The focus was perfect for my needs and cheap to boot.

it cost 250 quid for 3 weeks.

in and out of SFO

I used to use Hertz due to a work contract with them and they were excellent.

Paid $7 once to upgrade to a Camaro in SFO which was nice for a few days.

If you pick and pay for a particular type of car such as premium or sports then you’ll get something reasonable. Alternatively book a focus and see what they have in the car park for an upgrade when you get there.

What horror stories of US roads trips do you have.

Dallas freeway in rush hour after a 12 hour flight….

Should have taken 20min to get to my hotel, 2 hours later still getting stuck in coned off HOV lanes and going round in massive circles trying to escape…..

What horror stories of US roads trips do you have.

Landing in Boston after a delayed flight at about 11pm (feels like 3am or something), it’s snowing, and I’m greeted by a cheery “we’ve run out of cars” at Hertz despite me booking one.

They found me a car after 20 mins or so of me laying on my best passive/aggresive Birish “charm”. It was a POS but it got me between the hotel and work/mall/restaurant for a week, it even had the worlds worst GPS.

Budget, Jan car, half decent fuel economy petrol isn’t as cheap as you think especially when most cars seem to have a hole in the tank. Proper air con, nice seats and refined suspension for the shit roads was a better choice then an stupid engine.

oh jeeze that reminds me of hertz through work once …..

Bakersfield airport – Landed – rental desk is shut. Took taxi to town and back the next day.

Get told – yep heres your car – **** monster SUV – but we are out of sat navs.

Much like above i did a fair few laps of the freeway looking for a way off !

someone told me about a sat nav app called Navmii which I used in the States rather than using google maps. It was great!

2 hours later still getting stuck in coned off HOV lanes and going round in massive circles trying to escape…..

They love those HOV lanes in Texas, I had the same experience in Houston.

If you rent with National you get to pick whichever car you want from the available selection on the lot then pay as you leave. I usually rent with Enterprise and, unless you are really desperate to have a muscle car, would suggest something like a Ford Fusion is probably around $50 a day comfortable, and slightly better mileage than a charger or challenger. Just don’t get the hybrid. On the enterprise booking website you can put a request for a certain car so you could try that. I never have so I don’t know if they honor it.

someone told me about a sat nav app called Navmii which I used in the States rather than using google maps. It was great!

Waze is also great in the states if you have a data bundle that it can use.

Was in Phoenix at the beginning of the month for work and only had a Jeep thing. Tend to use Enterprise at the hire car centre, plenty of Camaros (had one out of SFO the following week), Mustangs and Chargers. Also they have their Exotic collection available at PHX so Lambos, Porches, Bentleys etc if you’re that way inclined.

Never had an issue driving in the US however you’ll probably have to pre-pay at gas stations as the pay at pump thing usually asks for a Zip code now (post code won’t work).

Oh, all US cars have AC – 110oF when I was there.

Honeymoon road trip. Vegas – Moab – Vegas with national parks en route. Was going to hire a convertible Mustang, because convertible Mustang, then thought an SUV would be more suitable if we were loaded with camping gear and living out of it for 2 weeks, and a better option if we found ourselves on dirt roads.

Ended up with a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a “soccer mom” SUV, 2 wheel drive, but it was comfy, did the job perfectly well (some dirt roads, nothing serious, no extended trips into the desert). Booking, picking up, dropping off process was as smooth as it could be.

Used the phone and CoPilot Live (already bought) with downloaded US maps for sat nav. Worked well.

My “What car for…” thread – couple of chuckles in there.
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/suv4-x-4-hire-in-us-grand-cherokee-toyota-highlander-or-nissan-pathfinder

If you’re with 3 then mobile data roaming is the same in the US as you have here, so I’ve always used google maps on my phone out there.

Most fun hire car I’ve had out there was a 2.5L 5 cylinder VW beetle.

I travel to phoenix a lot for work. (I wouldn’t go for a holiday, but that’s a different matter)

Doesn’t really matter who you book with, most of the big agencies will have the opportunity to upgrade easily at the door. You won’t ‘need’ anything more than the cheapest car, but if you want something else there will be no shortage of upgrades to ‘basic’ (ie v6 mustang/camaro) and ‘full fat’ (ie v8) pony cars, as well as corvettes etc.

My personal preference is hertz, as if you’re a gold club member (no cost, just sign up online) you can literally walk into the garage, look at your car, if you don’t like the one you have, pick another (from the same line at no cost, or from the larger pool with upgrade costs) and drive out of the garage, doing the paperwork on the way out. No queuing, just what you want after a long flight.

A few of the companies (I think hertz ‘adrenaline’ collection, and an equivalent from avis) offer a guaranteed car, but as above, just book something cheap and pick your lot from what is available. If you’re in the area for the whole two weeks, you could probably even rent something different for the first week than the second

edit : the included sat nav is expensive and rubbish. my personal choice is to buy a cheap windows phone (ie nokia 530 for £40 on ebay) – download ‘here maps’ and ‘here maps navigation’, the offline maps are free (pre-download them on wifi at home), buy a cheap ciggy socket charger and a windscreen mount and you’re all set.

When we hired for our honeymoon (In FL) I’d forgotten to book the sat-nav on the ‘normal car’.
Specifics of the normal car were no sat-nav and return with a full tank. As it was honeymoon I inquired about a Camaro. Cost an extra £70 for the 9 days hire including sat-nav and return with whatever fuel is left. 🙂

The sat-nav upgrade to the normal car was £60 extra IIRC.

for three weeks i bought a cheap sat nav at best buy

and sold it back here for half price

still cost me less than 3 days sat nav hire.

edit : the included sat nav is expensive and rubbish

yep Hertz’s “Never Lost (TM)” Sat nav is basically shite and should be rebranded “Always Lost”. It doesn’t display lanes properly (or at all) which is essential when you have a 12 lane freeway which becomes lane segregated by cones and each lane fans off somewhere different….

Hertz do Adrenaline Collection stuff which is “reserve this exact model” – used it to get a Mustang GT a couple of months ago. You pay a premium for it, although it was way cheaper via the Hertz UK site than the US one.

I love a convertible, but there’s no way I’d get one in Arizona in July – temps don’t fall below high-20s at night and will be up in the early 40s C during the day. You’d have the roof up and aircon blasting the whole time, but are paying a premium for a noisier cabin at speed.

Google Maps lets you download a pretty large section of map for offline use, it’s worked fine for me overseas if you know roughly where you’re going.

18 months ago I did a 5000 mile road trip from Chicago to Denver via Wisconsin, Minnesota the Dakotas Wyoming Nebraska used Dollar which was as cheap as chips, the car was a Nissan something or other about the size of a Focus.

Had 40,000 miles on it and a few dents and scratches, was perfect, sipped fuel had a decent radio, air con and cruise control.

When I dropped it back they didn’t even check it over just asked if I had had a good trip.

Would recommend them.

Scratch the sat nav and get one of these . . .

Then when the rental company fails to come up with the vehicle which you booked insist on one of these . . .

Have fun!!! 😛

I’d recommend going with a ‘Full Size’ car because, depending upon rental agency, it’s likely you’ll end up with a Ford product, either a Fusion or a Taurus.

Personally I prefer the Taurus as they are very comfortable to drive, have a decent sized engine, come well-equipped and have a boot you can put many bodies…or whatever…in.

The advantage of going with a full-size is also that, in these days of companies watching their travel budgets, smaller cars are used far more, meaning they’re like more ‘tired’. Full-sized cars, on the other hand, are often plentiful, low-mileage and new, due to manufacturers giving large discounts to rental companies to take them, driving sales figures up.

Last time I passed through Chicago O’Hare the rental lots were a sea of Ford Taurus’/Tauri (?).

Top and bottom, in my experience, if you go for something ‘Full-Size’ or larger it’ll be generally good, go smaller and you’re risking getting a smaller car ‘inflated’ to the next size band. For instance a Ford Focus as a ‘Standard’.

Recent 10 day trip to San Fran / Yosemite / Monterey, booked a convertible Mustang through Thrifty – turned up at the pickup to be told it ‘had a fault’, but that they had an delivery miles SLK 300 and a free tank of fuel for the faff. Thankfully was just the two of us and minimal luggage…even so couldn’t drive with the top down and everything in the boot, which was sort of the point. Fine once we got to a hotel for a day or two though.

Think it was £230 for 7 days plus bit for fuel. Thrifty, despite the balls up, were pretty good to deal with.

Driving through a still snowy-in-places Yosemite valley with the top down will be etched in the noggin for a wee while. Have a good trip! 🙂

To add, the last few cars I’ve had in the US have been;

– 2015 Ford Mustang GT – 5.0L, lovely.
– 2015 Dodge Challenger R/T – A bit hard on the back but great fun if you like brutal power over finesse.
– 2015 Chevy Suburban – An absolute beast and as it was black I felt like a member of the Secret Service.
– 2015 Ford Taurus – Munched up the miles between Chicago, Detroit, Toronto and back again.
– 2014 Chevy Impala – Another very comfortable car, decent sized boot, nice engine.