Lucky me California tomorrow, want to take 2 bikes, son and I, flights not an issue, more worried about hire car far end. How to transport bikes looked at a 7 seater, but doubt I can leave seats with hire company as land at san fran but leave from las vegas. Also have wife and daughter and there suitcases will not be small either!

Any ideas or advice welcome please

Tomorrow and you’re asking now?

Buy a bike rack when you get there?

Ask the car hire company if they have bike racks for hire?

Get a bigger vehicle?

Always go last minute, work issue, bigger vehicle best bet, anyone aware of bike rack rules in states?

How are the bikes packed?

In short, it’s not easy if they’re in bulky bike bags. We’ve done this as a couple of times as a couple, 2 bikes in bike bags and some other luggage.

We rented SUVs and ended up with a Nissan Xterra once and a Ford Explorer another time, which are both 7 seaters. We got everything in with all the seats down, but I wouldn’t say there was masses of space left over. That said, I’m fussy about being able to see out the back/sides, if you’re not, then you might be able to get the bikes bags in vertically. Regardless, I’m pretty sure our bike bags were too long to fit in with the rear seats up.

It’s worth saying the bigger is not always better. Seeing that we had some bulky kit, the agent suggested a Tahoe, which is vast on the outside, but the rear row of seats didn’t fold flat, so it wasn’t any more usable. We stuck with the Explorer which was great for our purposes.

Just pick a 7 seater like a dodge caravan – job jobbed

Pete think you nailed it there it depend on car config, big mpv’s with third row fixed seats that dont fold flat will not work as load space limited behind, its finding the car with fold down seats be it suv or mpv depends if rental company allows you to walk round to find the one with max space

Crew cab pickup, don’t drive through any suspect neighborhoods….

We just got a wheelchair taxi and chucked the bikes in

Like PeteT says, you want the biggest SUV they have that doesn’t have an extra row of seats in the boot. The third row will always fold but they often still take up an awful lot of room when they’re folded.
Tried an MPV one year – surprisingly unflexible seats meant bike bags ended up quite high lying on top of folded seat backs.

2017 Tahoe with rear seats folded

Book a transfer, in utah now and it’s been cheaper than hiring and much better straight off a crap flight. Hire a car for the day after

Hire a pick up with crew cab

I’ve been looking at vehicles to transport camping gear, 2 bikes, pushchair, 2 adults and 2 kids.
VW Transporter looks to be the best bet, might be able to squeeze it into a Mitsubishi L200 double cab.

Anyways, while looking at vehicals boot space on Google Images. Came across the Honda pilot which is sold in America, might be worth emailing ahead to see of you can rent one..boot is huge.

There’s also the Ford explorer which is a 7 seater, rear 2 seats fold flat giving a huge boot.

GO to Halfords today and get a couple of bike boxes to put the bikes in? My local one let me have a couple out of their cardboard recycling.

Then bin when you get there and find some more over there before flying back