when things changed as a result of the GFC, as you've mentioned, they put prices up and as a result, they've started making money! My suspicion is things will never go back to the way they were with unsustainably low prices.

The prices are unlikely to drop as low as they might have been before the financial crisis. However, if you look back to the FlyerTalk threads from the years when the car rental rates exploded, it seems unlikely the rental companies would want to go back to those days, either. Those were the days when people decided the value proposition of having a rental car over a taxi, bus, train, or airport shuttle increasingly was no longer there.

So while the rental agencies were purchasing fewer cars, it seemed that the customers were not interested in renting a significant number of the cars they did buy. I repeatedly saw cars at my local rental agencies parked in the same positions, apparently untouched, for several months. Having a handful of very expensive cars for rent, with maybe one customer every three weeks, is probably not profitable enough to run the business.

This trend was further prodded along when many clients started refusing to pay for consultants' car rentals, and when many corporations responded by switching to discount rental brands, and/or mandating compact car rentals instead of the usual, more lucrative midsize.