I'm very familiar with, and very grateful for, the Hertz "Premium Car Collection" available at most tourist destination cities. Many times I have been sent to Las Vegas for an Air Force exercise– only to have been stuck with a Cobalt, PT Cruiser, or something else that sucked the very soul out of my body. Then I discovered the Premium Cars from Hertz. Subaru Outbacks, Volvo XC90s and XC70s, Audi Q7s, and A4s. I will take my German luxury off-roader in brown please. Yes, I want the full coverage insurance. Now, much to my chagrin, Hertz offers a Chevrolet Corvette ZHZ, a Shelby GT-H rent-a-racer version of the Vette (with a 6hp bump thanks to a new exhaust system) for Chevy fans. We're talking 436bhp, yellow paint, $250 a day. So now you too can go to Las Vegas, surrender your credit card, and drive like an absolute hooligan in an overpowered car that you don't own (and hopefully bought the daily insurance coverage for) down the strip. Since RF and I both agree that the Corvette is a death car (a car that when driven hard intends to kill you), how many crashed ZHZs will we see before Hertz auctions them off at twice the price of a normal Corvette?
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How is a Corvette driven hard intending to kill the driver? What aspect of the vehicular dynamics are you referring to here?
I would guess the usual mechanism is that a guy unused to real performance cars gets into ‘the vette’, and used to the parameters of his Camry Solara, gets over his head.
If you go from a legit high performance car to a Vette, you’ll note big engine, big brakes, not a lot of finesse. Still, the big overcomes the lack of grace.
None of which saves the 50-ish guy coming back from a day of golf (and cocktails) who goes into the off ramp way too hot.
I often wonder how car companies do it. Given the amount of BMW owners I see who bought the car because “it’s a rolex with wheels”, any maker of true high performance cars has to somehow give the hardcore juice the enthusiast seeks, but without making it bad for the rookie. Indeed, BMW had a problem with the past M3 early lease terminations when Muffy complained it “rode hard”.
Vettes are a gas to drive. When they let go, though, it will be a a high polar moment-way higher than that Solara.
The Vette can’t be THAT bad. It’s low insurance rates would be much higher if 50 year old golfers were running them off the road at an alarming rate.
Props to Hertz for at least offering something that is not a typical rental mule…
undefeatable traction and stability control will save a lot of lives. I don’t know if they’ll save all the bumpers, though.
I love TTAC but this feels like trying to grab headlines. Yes, it is a powerful car. But I’m sure its got airbags out the ass as well as traction control and every other form of electronic stability control. I’ve driven a Z06 pretty hard, and unless you’re really TRYING to die, it seems to do a pretty damn good job of keeping you in line.
I think if cars were trying to kill you, they’d come without seat belts, and have a large spike instead of an airbag.
Agree. All modern high-performance cars that I’ve recently driven–various 911s, Exige S, Corvettes, Maseratis, Ferraris, GT-R–have stability platforms that I’m way too old to turn off, though I understand that doing so makes your dick bigger. But these electronics are so good that you’d have to be seriously drunk or crazed to drive so badly you’d overrun them.
I have a “car journalist” acquaintance whose name I won’t mention who thought he was so sierra hotel that he could turn off the TC in just a standard Corvette and immediately spun and totaled it.
Not me, man. I need all the help I can get.
problem with the vette is that it’s boring at twice the limit. and it punishes you for being law abiding.
I miss my CRX. There, I said it.
The problem with the Corvette is that it is so very, very easy to get over your head. Take, say, the Mazda RX-8 as a counterpoint: it’s very, very hard to Darwin yourself in it because, quite frankly, the grip is high and the power is so very low.
The other end of the scale are cars like the this or the Viper, where one careless stab at the throttle can put you well past any stability contol system’s help. Yes, it’ll help, but it won’t overcome physics for you, and you’ll be probing the effects of F=ma a lot in this car.
“When they let go, though, it will be a a high polar moment-way higher than that Solara.”
I would guess a Corvette would actually have a relatively low polar moment of inertia. it is essentially mid-engined.
I suspect the point is the same as with Liter-bikes; they aren’t that difficult to ride, but the horsepower gets you in trouble much faster than with smaller displacement machines.
Having driven both under-200 hp and over 300 hp cars on the track, I can say that greater horsepower had better be accompanied by respect and humility, or you’ll end up running into something going way too fast. It’s just too easy to press on the go pedal and find yourself at speeds with which most of us have very little experience.
Can you get any of the cool rental cars with a manual tranny?
I guess you actually don’t rent that much. Hertz has the “Prestige Collection” ” Fun Collection” and “Green Collection”, no “Premium Car Collection”.
They have had interesting cars for quite some time, Caddilac XLRs when they first came out, and more recently replaced with the Corvette Convertible for the last couple years. Plus the cars you listed and more.
The ZHZ is actually stripped down compared to the Convertible version they rent, no memory seats or heads up display, but it has the magnetic ride suspension and loud exhaust. Plus it’s a targa top, so you can get a convertible like experience.
I’m seeing rates around $136 / day with some corp discounts on the weekends.
$250 per day? I don’t think so. If I remember correctly, I think a Porsche 911 went for about $300 per day, Porsche Boxster $200 per day, and Lotus Exige $250 per day when I went to Vegas a couple of years ago. Personally, I would rather drive around in the Lotus to be in something different and something that handles great (based on what I’ve read and heard from owners). $136 per day? Now that I can handle. At that price, the Corvette becomes the choice for me. Though not having a stick would suck a lot of the fun out of driving any sports car.
“and drive like an absolute hooligan in an overpowered car that you don’t own (and hopefully bought the daily insurance coverage for) down the strip.”
I honestly don’t think one could ever get going fast enough on the Las Vegas Strip to do any kind of significant hooliganery (is that a word?). Never have I experience more enragingly slow and stupid traffic than that on Las Vegas Boulevard.
Corvettes will swap ends with the best of them. The 60s,and 70s GM big block A-bodies were worse, but not much.
Since RF and I both agree that the Corvette is a death car (a car that when driven hard intends to kill you), how many crashed ZHZs will we see before Hertz auctions them off at twice the price of a normal Corvette?
That depends….how many crashed Shelby GT-H Mustangs are there?
I remember renting a 350Z convertible from the Avis Cool Cars collection for a recent Keys trip and yeah, I did drive like a hooligan (that exhaust noise was so heavenly). I think this sort of thing is great, uhhh, once you get the insurance of course.
@Nemphre
Not that I know of. When I as at the rental office I managed to a look inside some of the special cars available and to my utter disappointment, not one was equipped with three pedals.
Bummer.
I think the offering of fast, fun cars for rent is an awesome development. It would be great to rent the Vette and autocross it or head out to a high performance driving event. And $250 is cheap compared to the tire wear and inevitable vehicular malfunction you’ll experience in your own car. It is also cheap compared to paying $50 to drive a Chevy Aveo.
@ Tummy,
I rent A LOT from Hertz. They know me by name at the rental counter in Las Vegas. I just lumped all the categories into one name, so I didn’t have to list all of the others.
@ZCline,
Your average driver will get in way over their head in a ZHZ way too easily, especially when caught up in the excitement of being on vacation and wanting to “have a good time” in Las Vegas. I’ve seen it with the Ferraris, Lotuses, and even the regular Vette rentals in Vegas. I used to live there, seen it all…
I think its a little unfair to call a Corvette a “deathcars. Vettes are quite fun and capable cars. They are also pretty reliable. It’s the amateur drivers who buy and try to learn how to drive fast on public roads that leads to the “deaths”. The cars have very little reason why it happens as most crashes involving these cars are due to high speed.
Your average driver will get in way over their head in a ZHZ way too easily, especially when caught up in the excitement of being on vacation and wanting to “have a good time” in Las Vegas.
Depends on if the average driver knows how to turn off the active handling.
Who knows if that button actually works on this car…not too hard to unprogram it through the engine computer. (unlike the paper clip trick on the GT-H)
It is also cheap compared to paying $50 to drive a Chevy Aveo.
A compact will run you about $20 per day in a city like Vegas, and I guess I should have added that A ‘Vette for $250 is a better deal than a Shelby for $200 per day (I think that was the cost for the Hertz “rent-a-racer”).
last time I was in las vegas I rented a Z4 for a trip out to the dam and valley of fire, from one of those rent-an-exotic places. tons of fun, even with the “shiftable” automatic. if you just want to cruise the strip, get the lamborghini at like $1700/day.
Fun collection…not prestige in this case. Who knows what the logic is behind that.
They are available in several cities as of June 16.
I’ve got mine booked for next week at $210 per day.
Last year I rented the GT-H and drove out to the Valley of Fire and stopped by the Shelby factory on the way back.
It was a fantastic day.
The Vette is VERY easy to drive safely. I went from driving my mom’s Camry, to driving a Lex GS400 (RWD, 300hp) to driving a 2006 Vette (w/ a stick) for the past year and I haven’t really even come close to losing control of the car. I had never even driven a stick before I got the Vette, and I was 23 at the time and had absolutely no experience with high performance cars (assuming a GS400 isn’t ‘high performance’). As long as you have at least a little bit of an idea of what you can and can’t do in a high-powered RWD car (eg. don’t floor it from a stop because the back end will come around) it is difficult to kill yourself in a Vette as long as you’re not an idiot
I’ve rented a V6 ‘Stang before and got myself in more trouble with that thing because the brakes aren’t up to the task of slowing you down from irresponsible speeds. I must have used up about 90% of the tire tread in that ‘Stang the few days I had it ;) There are few things more fun than constant burnouts (in parking lots, at red lights, etc.) in a car you don’t have to buy tires for
The Vette looks bad to the safety Nazis for on reason only: It has extremely high limits and a relatively modest price tag. It is available to most anyone who would like one. When you finally overcome the limits of adhesion, you are leaving the road at a very high rate of speed, and you are probably sideways. A recipe for disaster if I ever saw it. This is not the car's fault; is is simply the result of such a high speed car being in the hands of inexperience. Perhaps that reason alone might make Hertz give pause. I read somewhere that almost 50% of driver deaths in Vettes were to drivers that were not the registered owners…seems pretty clear to me. Take a guy who, sadly, is stuck in a Camry, and turn him loose in this. Suddenly, there is no understeer at 45 MPH like he is used to…hits that exit ramp way too hot, jumps on a set of real brakes, and good night!!
Take a guy who, sadly, is stuck in a Camry, and turn him loose in this. Suddenly, there is no understeer at 45 MPH like he is used to…hits that exit ramp way too hot, jumps on a set of real brakes, and good night!!
Phew.. it’s a good thing that I’m stuck in a Mazda and not a Camry ;-)
Maybe too late, but I just tried to rent in Boston. Had the reservation a month in advance, but was turned down at the rental counter because I had an IN STATE license, for “security reasons.” Beware!
A previous poster disparaged “the amateur drivers” who get into trouble in Corvettes.
Would everybody on TTAC who’s a really talented professional driver please put up their hand?
Thought so.
@Stephan Wilkinson Would everybody on TTAC who’s a really talented professional driver please put up their hand?
I’m not sure anyone was claiming to be a talented professional driver. But my 335 has ‘only’ 300 hp and I have had it on the track and did learn that it is *much* faster than I am. Humbling experience I would definitely apply if I happened to rent a Corvette.
There’s not knowing, and then knowing that you don’t know…