Procrastinating as is usual for me.

As a family we cope fine running one car. I commute by bike and wife uses the car including school run. We have a Punto and its fine for 95% of our journeys but we are struggling when we go away. We tried a roof box and the car really struggled. For our last holiday we managed to borrow an estate from the inlaws and it made life so much easier.

I’ve been looking at new cars but now can’t decide what to do. If we just rent 2-3 times a year then I guess it’ll cost about £1k but means we don’t have to buy/tax/insure a bigger car. Anyone try this and how did it work out?

Seems like a good idea! (though never tried it – I should)

Rachel

Yes on occasion – its fine. NO kids and not a car owner at all but if I want a car I hire one. Always works out for me far cheaper than owning a car and you get the vehicle you need for that occasion – fr me anything from tiny city cars to luxobarges via camper vans and transits

We do although a) are expats / immigrants in Asia b) usually once, rarely twice yearly trips ‘home’.

I don’t know your holiday plans (milage / length of time) but we rented a “Vauxhall Insignia or similar” over this coming Christmas for £14.20 a day. It could have been £22 a day for E Class or similar. Last summer we got a Mazda 6 Estate for £13.50 per day and got the different drop off fee waived after a quick tweet.

You’d need to rent an Insignia / Mondeo for 71 days to meet the £1k predictions.We nearly rented a 5 seater Merc Cetan but would have been royally screwed over on the fee for returning to a different location. It was less than £14 a day. £12 rings a bell. Like the budgey, cheep! I think your decision should be based on well under £1k comparisons. A little shopping around, using Expedia, Kyak and other comparison sites, keeping an eye on prices etc can save a fortune.

We pay £40-something for annual excess insurance.

Of course the rent you pay is ‘wasted’, but the figures look good.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmjdIFUByzo[/video]

FWIW, The Mazda 6 was great with your foot to the floor.

I did it for about 7 years when I was working away from home. I didn’t need a car, but would hire one (often a Punto!) whenever required.

I think that most rental places nowadays charge a lot for additional Collision Damage Waiver insurance. I believe you can take out your own annual CDW insurance which would cover you for any rental car, and it costs a fraction of what the rental places charge.

Have friend with no car (central London residents) who rent whenever they need one. With planning it’s rarely more than £100-150 a week. As you say OP just rent a 4dr estate for the holidays.

Makes a lot of sense for that. Some of it just hinges on how (in)convenient it is to do the pick up / drop off.

We just have the one car, and a couple of times a year I might need to be away for a weekend when the wife also needs it – I just book a “Corsa or equivalent” via the local Sixt for about £11/day (unlimited miles) and usually get something nicer than that.

Sounding promising. The 1K figure came from a couple of quick quotes from the big rental companies. Sounds like they’re on the pessimistic side so probably makes even more sense than I first thought. Interesting about the collision waiver – I’ll check our policy on that too.

Very pessimistic pricing.

As for the insurance, never pay anything at the desk. It’s barely even worth bothering your own insurance company. That £39.99 is for unlimited annual rentals of less than 60 days at a time.

If mileage is limited, it can be cheaper to rent for an extra day or two than paying x per mile. It was for us to get a nice saloon from Exeter to London in a day return rather than pay per mile.

When I lived in Stuttgart there was several community Car Pools where you subscribe and could just use whichever car suited you best with a milage payment. Not sure if we have similar in bigger towns over here

I don’t, we need 2 cars sadly and my requirements for work (who supply it) means its more than enough for our hols etc. (Standard STW caviat for admitting having 2 cars).

One of my friend’s does though, he doesn’t own a car at all. Rents a car once or twice a year for trips around Scotland or Cornwall etc.

If you book ahead and shop around it can be as cheap as £70 a week, maybe a bit more for something a bit bigger. Even without shopping around I could book a Vauxhall Insignia Esate for a week next August for £140. That’s not much in the grand scheme of things, Pick it up, give it back, let someone else worry about buying, insuring and maintaing it.

i rented a car for UK holidays when living abroad. I flew into Manchester so usually hired from Arnold Clark as they were the cheapest.

Since moving to London, I’ve been amazed at the hire costs. As an example, it’s cheaper for me to book dinner in London for two then travel to Manchester by train in 1st class and hire a Focus-sized car from Manchester than it is to hire a Fiesta sized car from London area.

(i was once upgraded from an Insignia to an Audi A6 with Arnold Clark. That was brilliant 😀 )

Borrow a car again?
I have a few folk insured on mine, and have done for years. They pay the insurance difference (usually £50 a year) and we leave them on all year.

rent a van and take it as a second vehicle, v handy if you’ve bikes, surfboards etc to take with you.

I use my elderly parents car when in uk. When I added my name as a named driver the policy went down as I assume I am a lower risk. Win win. I have just booked up a few rail journeys and if you are flexible it’s cheap as chips, next day rail travel is v expensive.

I’d buy a bigger car. I can’t see how it would cost enough to justify renting and you’d have the convenience of a bigger car.

I’d buy a bigger car. I can’t see how it would cost enough to justify renting and you’d have the convenience of a bigger car.

Because you don’t need to buy another car. If you don’t need it day to day then paying extra to get one seems pointless. As with anything get some quotes and go from there. The advantages are you can get what you want when you need it.

I hire cars all the time. I dont need a car all the time and my car needs when I do need one vary massively. Hertz are cheap as anything from October to May, Arnold Clark are cheapest during summer and often have 7 day for the price of 5 offers.

Yes. When I was living in central Leeds doing my PhD at the university then I rented cars fairly regularly to go away for weekend breaks.

There was no point owning a car as I walked / cycled to work every day and hiring a car for 2-3 days worked out at around £110 with additional excess insurance. Between two or three of us it was cheaper than the train, even factoring in petrol, and gave us much more freedom.

Now living outside of Leeds in a more rural location so a car is necessary, but if we moved back to a central metropolitan location then we’d probably go back to renting-as-needed again.

From my last trip back I picked up a VW Caddy for 7 days for 185 quid (booked less than a day before picking it up)

Booking details

Vehicle type: Small Van
Duration: 7 days
Start: 09:00, 08/19/2015, warwick
End: 09:00, 08/26/2015

Quoted Price: £185.00

Given prices like that being available renting what you want when you need it is a good idea (1 week every month for that would be 2,200/Year which I doubt would get you an estate car with MOT/Tax/Insurance)

When OP’s car packs up I would look at a bigger car.

Having run small cars and big ones, there is negligible difference in cost of purchase or running, but you have more flexibility.

Renting is expensive compared to buying the right size car to start with

Anyone just rent a car for UK holidays?

Have done in the past (3 of us, and my dad’s just got a 3 seater van) as after a couple of days in a small south Cumbrian town you have to get out and about. Landing at night and getting to the hire office just before they close is handy for free or cheap upgrades, last time a 90-mile old C220 after paying for an Astra or something.

We were happy with public transport too, bit harder now with a young ‘un in tow, but in London we paid extra for a hotel in Z1 and just walked everywhere rather than faff with tubes and buses with a pushchair.

@Funky – really? I’m disbelieving but not because I’ve facts to go against it.

But: VED, fuel, depreciation, tires etc. There are so many variables it’s true, but renting’s actually fairly cheap if you can run a smaller car for the other 300 days a year.

simon_g – Member

Makes a lot of sense for that. Some of it just hinges on how (in)convenient it is to do the pick up / drop off.

Use a company that does a drop-off service and that disappears too

I think I’m going to put my plans for a new car on hold and give it a try. Based on some of the prices quoted above I just need to do some shopping around a bit to get the good deals.

The Punto will give up eventually and maybe we’ll replace with something bigger at that point but currently it’s not costing much to keep running.

Equally I think our needs as a family are going to keep changing over the next few years so it would give us time to figure out what we really need e.g. if we have another child we might need that second car.

We’ve just moved to one car as we weren’t using two

We have the option of borrowing a second car when we need it. Our main car is massive as we have 2 dogs and 2 kids so don’t need to go any bigger

I’m surprised how much it costs to hire a car for a weekend, compared with you guys. I’m in North London though. A weekend of hire is about £120, basically £45-£60 for a 2 day hire (with late pick up on Fri and early drop off on Mon), and that’s for something small

I cycle most places that are local, and have a motorbike too

@Funky – really? I’m disbelieving but not because I’ve facts to go against it.

I used to run Fiesta/Focus sized cars. I then started commuting a long way each day and bought a Mondeo.

It had more toys, was more economical, safer, more space, same price for tyres and insurance etc. Maintenance was cheaper as it was chain driven rather than belt. Even buying prices are very similar.

Tax was more expensive, but whats £200 for all the other benefits.

The thing I really like about the rental option is you always have the right car for what yo are doing. And its always a nice new shiny one