avneeshj

I have a weekly rental coming up at DTW in a couple weeks. Last couple times I rented from National at DTW I lucked out and got a XTS and a 2015 Tahoe which were both really nice. This time I have signed up for Emerald Club and have booked a midsize with Emerald Aisle access. What car can I realistically look to be getting?

piper28

Pretty much any of the usual midsize or full sized cars. I would say most of the time what I see on EA (and I'll admit, i don't pay as much attention now that I'm selecting from ES), it's been things like 200's, elantra's, sentra's, sonata's, altima's. Maybe throw a few passat's in there too from time to time.

I will say on most trips I've been to DTW there's been a fair sprinkling of small suv/cuv vehicles on both EA and ES.

dwbf11

Thursday 10PM

EA/ES Highlights
Buick Enclave
Several '15 Mustangs

Otherwise, well stocked but standard fare.

piper28

Bah, I keep missing the '15 mustangs at locations. I really want to give one a try.

avneeshj

Thanks for the info. So the best bet would be to find a 200 or a fusion if that's around. Any tips on how to locate the better specced cars out from the EA? I'm leaning towards the Fusion if I can find one in there.

piper28

Fusion's probably iffier on EA, but you might luck out. Best bet on trying to find the better trims is often looking at the back of the car for the badging (after a while you might recognize the rims on a car, the Fusion Titanium's rims are pretty easy to pick out). On a Fusion, you're pretty much going to find 3 levels of trim on them. Base is the SE without ecoboost badging. I try to avoid that one because it's pretty low end. SE with the ecoboost badging is an ok config, adds some features like heated seats. Titanium is the best if you can find it (and can generally also be identified by the large touch screen on the dash).

A lot of Chevy cars use LT for the lower end trims and LTZ for their higher end trim. A Malibu LTZ is a pretty reasonable choice, and I've definitely seen Malibu's on the EA (although it is considered a full sized car).

The 200's I don't have a good feel for identifying them. Everything I've seen looked pretty base, cloth with manual seats. The very bottom end ones have a 3 inch screen for the radio, everything else has a 5 inch. Kinda looks like if it's blue, it's at least a limited trim (which is closer to their bottom than top), so a couple I saw last time might not have been the absolute bottom trim, but they still looked pretty bare. I didn't see any badging to indicate limited. The S and C which are the two higher trim levels both I think have badging on the back to indicate that. I've never seen one on the rental lot, but I know some people supposedly have.

All the Altima's and Sonata's are base model with few options on them.

avneeshj

Thanks so much for all the input. Based on this and the fact that I do not want to be stuck driving a base level 200/Altima/Sonata with cloth and manual seats I have changed my booking from the midsize/Emerald Aisle to the Full Size. It was $20 more for the week but that will be well worth it I think.

dwbf11

That's a waste, IMO. The staff here is excellent and if there is something you want that is not available on the Emerald Aisle, so long as your request is reasonable they will more than likely help you out. There are always plenty of well equipped cars on the EA here.

piper28

In addition to this, I've rarely seen more than about 4 cars in the Full sized aisle. DTW seems to be pretty good at keeping the EA and ES sections stocked, but the type specific aisles not so much.

There will likely be a *lot* of cars to choose from in the EA section. I've only been there once or twice where the area wasn't full, and their aisle section is pretty good sized (I'd guess at least 50+ cars on a normal day). The only time I've really had a problem there was when Chicago was shut down after their fire in the ATC stuff, and there were basically no cars - (and quite frankly, I have no complaints with the staff there for even that occasion, when I turned my nose up at the Impala Limited that was one of the few cars there and said I didn't really want an SUV because of mpg, one of the managers went back and checked out what was being cleaned, and said if I was willing to wait a little bit there was a Malibu LTZ that he could bring out).

So I'd stick with the mid-size rental, and while you might have to walk through the lot a little bit, I think you'll be able to find something that would make you fairly happy.

avneeshj

So I just picked up my car this evening. I went to the desk and was told to go under the emerald club canopy and pick any car I liked. There was a whole bunch of altimas, 200s and Malibu. Also spotted was 1 each of patriot, Santa Fe, passat and jetta. I ended up picking a Malibu and drove home. Not entirely impressed with the car. The person at the counter had told me it'd be $50 Extra per day if I wanted any one of the 2 ATS that were parked in front of the building. I'm thinking of revisiting tomorrow to switch for a different car.

piper28

Fri 12/19 around 4:30

Pretty uninspiring selection. Been a couple of weeks, so having problems remembering the exact specifics, but I remember a fair number of altimas and sonatas. Saw a couple of Fusions and a Taurus over to the side of the EA area (parked perpendicular to the direction the cars are on the aisle, not the storage aisles over there). Asked about taking one of those and they had no problem. Turned out to be a fusion titanium and a Taurus Limited.

Was doing a one way from DTW to FLL with too much luggage, so ended up taking the Taurus.

piper28

Sat 1/3 around 11pm

ES:
2 Impala Limiteds
a couple of Maximas (have to admit, I don't think I've seen on of those here)
usual altima's and sonatas
Impala LTZ

Only the first couple aisles were available, everything beyond that was parked in solid. Took the Impala LTZ.

dwbf11

Looks like another re-shuffle of operations under the canopy here at DTW.

They are finally implementing a proper "upcharge"/Premiere Section section on the street side of the canopy booth. For now, it looks like there is also still a paid upgrade section in front of the station as well.

Executive is now on the far (station building) side of the canopy. Emerald Aisle is now on the street side of the canopy but further back than the PS.

Friday around 8AM
PS/Upcharge: About 3 2015 Ford Expedition EL's (XLT/EcoBoost trim) and several more Suburbans in LT and LTZ trim. There was also an Infiniti QX60. All were advertised as a $50/day upcharge.

Executive:
Several 300C's (none AWD, unfortunately)
2X Tahoes (1 LTZ, 1 LT)
Some pickups (Ram, Silverado)
A few other small SUVs (Jeep Compass/Chevrolet Craptivas)

Emerald Aisle:
Several newish Chrysler 200's, 1 200C
Other small FWD sedans
2X Chevrolet Traverse
1X Fusion Titanium
2X Dodge Challenger (including a 2015 model)

At the back of the canopy it was all packed solid with excess cars, but interesting sightings included a few Toyota 4Runners and Jeep GC Limiteds.

piper28

I'll have to warn my wife that they've moved things around some, although it doesn't sound too bad. She has the next couple pickups at DTW for us.

piper28

Friday around 5:30pm

Wife was picking up, so I don't have a complete report. However, she'd decided she wanted to try something interesting, so was looking for a mustang. She actually found 3 mustangs and a camaro in the ES section, which is more than I've ever seen there. (I've seen 1 mustang in the past, and an occasional camaro). Breakdown was along these lines:
2014 Mustang Convertible
2014 Mustang Coupe
Camaro Convertible
2015 Mustang Ecoboost Premium Fastback

I found the presence of the convertibles on the aisle to be amusing given that Sunday's weather the high was going to be around 0. Guess they figured they weren't going to get too many rentals for those .