Originally Posted by
m907
There may be something to that as Stellantis is foolishly discontinuing the Charger and Challenger and moving towards all EVs. I don't know anything about manufacturing but they've been making those cars with minimal updates for nearly 20 years so perhaps they are trying to use up all the capacity and parts before killing them off.
That could be it. I am noticing a sudden increase in Chargers at my local Enterprise, and they share the fleet across the city and with National at the airport. Some of them are quite nice as they have leather seats. They have been choosing them in the bright red/orange colors which honestly looks really good, but if someone is renting it on a business trip to see a client it may not be the best color choice. They must have secured some deal to buy off the remaining stock. Literally every Charger I see on the streets are either police cars or a rental car. I walk by a touristy place where lots of tourists drive rental cars to and I have noticed recently more people are coming in brand new Chargers than the usual Camrys, Malibus etc.
A Charger is a great car, but if it was a road trip I'd probably go with a Malibu for the better fuel economy.
I still remember growing up my dad rented a Pontiac GrandPrix on an ICAR reservation and I was so excited because of how it looked, and my dad was complaining about the car for the entire road trip across Utah and Yellowstone that it was hard to drive and sluggish.
Originally Posted by
m907
Hertz was getting better after they rolled out Ultimate Choice and actually began marketing that they had their "best fleet ever". This was in 2019 and early 2020. It wasn't as good as National but it was getting pretty decent. Then they went bankrupt and now their cars are consistently trash. The few times I've rented with them over the last couple years to burn points, the cars had serious wear and tear. And it seems like every time I peek at a Hertz lot walking by, it's all base trim Hyundais and Toyotas.
Yeah I have noticed that I think National/Enterprise brings in the Chrysler 300 at a higher trim than other rental companies, but National also puts it as LCAR while I think Avis may have it as PCAR (not entirely sure).
I think Natonal/Enterprise is a bit behind in EV compared to Hertz.
The big shock I have is that National Corporate buys RAV 4s in the LE trim with plastic wheel caps! But the NAtional Franchise location in CAnada buys them in XLE trim.
Originally Posted by
Auto Enthusiast
huskyflyer before covid, National had the nicest cars, followed by Avis. Hertz and Enterprise tended to have old, high mileage trash. Hertz and Enterprise more often had base models, or one level higher. 10 years ago, Kias with plastic window cranks and no cruise control were common there, but rare with Avis and National.
NYC has a relatively captive audience- people who live there and don't own a car. They expect the rental to be locally available for weekend getaways. That means heavy usage. Garages are small, so don't carry that many cars during the week when people are working and commuting by transit. The cars are driven in from the airports on Thurs and Fri afternoons and driven back on Sun nights. This staff costs money. Airports can be cheaper for direct pickup but it takes a while to get there from Manhattan. Hence beat up 65k mi 2 year old Camrys for $175/day remain, even when OEM deals were plentiful.
Makes sense! It must be a lot of labor just to move a car around. I imagine moving just one car from Newark to Midtown will take at least 2 hours (even at min wage that is at least $30 in labor, and then another $30 to move it back to Newark on Monday so $60 in moving fees alone - that is enough to rent a car in some cities!) unless they are like trucking them in.
I do wonder given how much better/advanced cars are these days if consumer expectations have increased to or they think the car rentals are buying higher quality cars when in fact cars are just better these days. I think even a Chevy Spark today has more features than a FCAR from 5-10 years ago.