Back when fuel was below $3 a gallon, renting a car was like playing Wheel of Fortune. Though you usually got the car you rented, once in awhile, a big prize like an SUV or a Cadillac DeVille came up. ABC News reports that rental customers are now avoiding upgrades to bigger cars and SUVs because of high fuel prices. In turn, they've created a shortage of rental compacts, forcing rental companies to respond with more aggressive tactics to "upgrade" the customer to bigger and more fuel-thirsty options. The oversupply's sending SUVs daily rental rates downward, to the point where renting an SUV is becoming cheaper than renting a compact. As ABC notes: "an Internet search by ABC News this week found Budget Rent A Car offering a daily rental of an intermediate SUV from Newark airport in New Jersey for $66. An economy vehicle was $76, and a compact car cost $77." [NB: TTAC could not duplicate these deals on AVIS.com or Nationalcar.com.] One frequent renter has a word of advise for rental car companies: deal. "[They] need to anticipate what's coming. If Avis came up tomorrow and said, 'Our vehicles are fuel-efficient vehicles,' they'd see a surge in people wanting to rent from Avis." Oops! Looks like Hertz's Green Collection PR team dropped the ball.
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What a timely post.
JUST this weekend my wife and I decided to save money on a 600 mile round trip by renting a sub-compact instead of taking our SRX. We were given a stripped Rio but ended up turning it in as I didn’t fit behind the wheel. We ended up with a PT Cruiser (the only other car they had), which, as most know, doesn’t offer much in the way of MPGs, but it was roomy and comfortable, and the fuel savings were enough to cover its $20/day cost. So the rental was basically free, and we saved miles and wear/tear on our car.
All in all, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Perhaps next time in an even more fuel-efficient car.
They can’t give the things away at Enterprise. I rent often as my job requires me to travel and I usually get the standard car (“Fusion, or something similar) as that is what my job pays for.
But lately, they’ve been constantly asking if a wanted an SUV for my company’s standard car rate ($38 per day)!. I usually don’t get the things as they are a terrible drive, but if its between a Cherokee or a PT Loser…
Thankfully, the job pays for gas, too. It cost me $74 to fill up the Cherokee’s tank.
I remember a certain trip to Niagara Falls in a Cadillac Deville. Back then we were complaining because gas was 69 cents a liter.
The speculators will never know how fortunate they are that they did not deprive me of that trip.
Just booked a rental for a vacation, and I had to turn down numerous free upgrades to get a subcompact. Even though it will probably be a shitbox like an Aveo, it will be fine for me and my wife and two suitcases. Otherwise, the cost of gas could easily exceed the cost of the rental itself.
I took a drive past the Avis rental lot a few days ago and the place looked like a Dodge dealership. Soooooo many SUVs parked up and yet, not too many compacts…or sub-compacts for that matter. It’ll be interesting to see how they’ll try to pitch me a SUV when I’ve already reserved a compact for an upcoming road trip.
Buick 61:
just curious, isn’t one of the points of owning something like a SRX the nice highway cruising environment it affords??
Currently living the dream in a Pontiac Vibe rental in DC. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a hybrid car in this town.
True dat. A friend of mine visiting town rented a car… they only had a some Dodge SUV left. She hated it. Cost her $20 in fuel to drive across town. She managed to get them to exchange it for a Corolla two days later.
Every time (admittedly not often) that I’ve rented a car, they have always “upgraded” to another vehicle even though I “reserved” a compact. (Why don’t car rental companies seem to understand the concept of reservations?) I can tell you that if I take a vacation in the southeast next fall like I plan, I will do all that I can to avoid being “upgraded” to an Impala or Dodge Magnum. Now if they wanted to upgrade me to a Mustang, Corvette, etc., I would be fine with that.
P.S. Thalter, see above as to why reserving that subcompact is now guarantee that you will get it. You may arrive their and be faced witht he decision of taking a larger car or no car as they don’t have any Aveos left ont he lot (How wierd is that?). In Las Vegas, I got stuck with a Magnum at the pick-up location. As far as I knew when I left the rental counter to take the shuttle to the car lot, I was getting a compact.
improvement_needed :
June 30th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Buick 61:
just curious, isn’t one of the points of owning something like a SRX the nice highway cruising environment it affords??
Sure. But we’ve had to make the trip several times this month, and it was getting hard to justify spending $130 for gas over the course of just two days all in the name of traveling in comfort and style.
From Seinfeld:
Agent: I’m sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.
Jerry: I don’t understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?
Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That’s why you have the reservation.
Agent: I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don’t think you do. If you did, I’d have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to *hold* the reservation and that’s really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.
I just completed a 2200 mile road trip going from denver to south dakota and wyoming … in a Chevy Trailblazer.
We had booked a car at Budget but well they didn’t name the company Budget for no reason…certainly we got Budget level customer service.
After spending an hour in line, the lady told us straight out that there were no more cars available … even the FULL SIZE one that we had booked.
so they said that we could either wait for a few hours for one of the expected cars to come in or hop into the Trailblazer right away.
Budget didn’t really have any tactics or anything. They basically didn’t have any freaking cars. You either get in an SUV or you GTFO.
Last year I had a 22-hour round trip for business. Since they had no more full-size vehicles available (typically a Dodge Charger), they upgraded me to an SUV.
A four-banger, stripped-down Ford Escape.
Maybe someone can explain this “upgrade” to me. Unfortunately, the sheer horror of this vehicle was not completely evident until about an hour into the drive, at which point going back for something else was out of the question. Worst road noise, wind noise, and handling of any late model vehicle I’ve driven in a decade.
Bonus: Worse fuel economy than the V6 Charger. Not that I was paying for it, but still. Coefficient of drag for the loss.
Rental preferences are sort of a real time indicator of Consumer tastes & preferences.
Given the how quickly the Rental Agencies turn over their fleets things should shift in the next 12-18 months.
For people who already own an SUV it is usually cheaper to just grit their teeth at the pump rather than get hosed on trade-in and acquisition costs for something smaller. The only exception would be if you had a longer (60mi+ round trip) commute.
I reserved a rental car back in march through the enterprise website. They asked for your name, address, and phone number while making the reservation. One thing they didn’t ask for was a credit card number.
So it’s like “Hey I need a car, here’s my name”. Then they’re like “Ok, car reserved”. Except they didn’t take any money from me to reserve the car.
I mean if you reserved plane tickets that way, I’m pretty sure there would be a lot more problems with there not being a seat on the plane for you.
This is great news. If I ever need to move furniture, I can rent a Suburbahoe for a day for cheap.
Seems like the fuel costs would impact the holiday traveller more than the business person.
Funny thing is, if you will be doing mostly highway miles, a Buick Lucerne gets about the same mileage as a Cobalt, 30 mpg. If doing mostly urban driving, then the shitbox would use less gas.
If I was shown that list of vehicles, I’d ask if they had anything else while looking over at the other rental places.. It sucks getting a dull, crappy rental car. Had far to many of them to the point where I’ll pay a bit more to have something decent to drive.
I just rented a mid size from Hertz for 40 a day a full size SUV was 97 a day! I let you know if they upgrade me at the counter!!
lol. I’m loving this article’s picture. Every single one of those vehicles is a Chrysler product except for the Economy category, and that’s because Chrysler does not make a vehicle in this class.