Picked up car newish Mercedes C220 diesel at LGW ~8K miles and noticed a strong air freshener smell but figured it was just cleaned and we're all good (more on this later). Anyway, left in a hurry as I was really late and on the M25 notice the nav and dash is all in Spanish! Yikes, not obvious how to reset it to English, so end up stopping and after some Internet research get it to back to English, yeah!

As soon as I get back on M25 it starts raining (no surprise there, it's summer in England), but the damn windscreen washers won't squirt any water -oh well, chalk it up to the usual Hertz QC (or lack of).

Next day, get in the car and it stinks of cigarettes. Smell is coming from the headliner and the air freshener was to cover up the cigarette smell up - pretty sad show. If I had not been out in the "sticks" I would have returned the car that day.

Overall it was a pretty awful car to drive, could never get comfortable and found the driving position just not to my liking. It was vey economical, got ~60MPG from the diesel, but it's still a grotty driving vehicle having been "ridden hard and put away wet" a few times I suspect.

On returning to LHR there was a mystery dent in the bumper (no idea how it happened) and I got hit up for about $500 US which was fair enough and I'll let the CC card sort it out.

Overall this experience reminded me why I switched from Hertz to National and that the lowest price isn't always worth it! Pretty dismal show on Hertz part and clearly they need better QC on the cars.