Update: I notice a few of the members here had been talking about carfirmation email.
I had noticed most of my recent rentals had carfirmation email that says "see gold board" without any mention of ultimate choice, some of the times I had reserved larger vehicles and some were just midsize, neither had the "president's circle zone" or info of a pre assigned car.

I believe I forgot to mention my rental was not a one way rental as I know sometimes locations would try to force you to take a worse car on one way reservations.
The gold agent did offer me a "downgrade" to some of the 50/60k mileage midsize cars if I really didn't want anything from the PC zone.

I ended up taking transit and uber since I was just there short term.
Today I was at sjc and picked up a brand new elantra to try out from 5S again, checked out without any issue and I even asked the gate agent if PC member could only choose from PC is a new policy update, gate agent told me that "They don't know what they're doing at OAK"
I guess hertz really need to train their people better on policies.