OVer the summer I picked up a rental at Hertz LAX ... 2020 Honda accord from the president circle lot with 30K+ mile ...

After a day of driving I am noticing the engine surging / loosing power while driving .. and eventually the dashboard turns into a christmas tree flashing many malfunctions (brakes, emissions, transmission, lane assist etc etc etc ... ) The car still runs but i decide to exchange it before anything worse happens ...

Go to the airport .. check it in .. with an agent (this is rare these days) mention the malfunctions observed and after a little while i drive off with a replacement car ...

I finish my trip , go home .... So far all good ..

Then the first weird sign occured .. I get an email from hertz about an accident/damage to my rental car .. I reply there was no accident just malfunctions ...
(in retrospect this was a tell tale sign of whats coming but at the time I really didnt think twice about what looked like a 2 sentence form letter with no clear action requested)

And now 2 months later it has become clear in the mail letter I just received .... And they suggest I hand over a credit card number to cover a 4000$ repair bill ...
No details whatsoever on what is broken .. just pay up ...

Only after calling hertz did I receive the full report that describe the damage found and the repair costs : they want 4000$ for a damaged bumper and a missing airbag ...

I believe I can hand over that headache to my auto insurance and credit card company (by mistake i used a credit card that is secondary for us based rental claims)

But the whole process and claims looks weird :
-for the exterior damage claim : if it was as visible as the pictures they provided (bumper trim around exhaust) then the employee checking in the car should have seen it and said something ... to me it seems like hertz lost their opportunity to complain ...

-for the missing airbag ... : as a renter what am i supposed to do when i rent ? run a mechanics 100 item check on the car systems before taking a car ? There was no visible effraction on the vehicle while i had it so I am pretty confident that the airbag was gone before i got the car and eventually the damaged wire harness may have shorted out leading to all the malfunctions alarms .. (When i picked up the car there was no malfunction lights on , in particular no airbag malfunction)
->so did i rent a vehicle without an airbag ? thats a weird feeling ....

Has anyone encountered cases like this (in particular the missing airbag) ? how did you handle it ?

I am a pretty frequent renter with Hertz and have been for 10+yrs and this is really my first really negative experience with them ...

Safe travels !