Originally Posted by HamburgAround
They do have their own counters in Italy, as mentioned before.
I once rented the smallest car and got a Nissan Micra.
As they have Smarts, they will give you one of these if you request a automatic transmission.
We Europeans don't enjoy automatics too much, so the chioce is limited and most of the cars have manual stickshift.
So just try to make sure you get the transmission guaranteed.
Just book your car via internet
www.sixt.com and you can enter everything there. It may be the case, that not every size offers the possibility of auto-transmission.
Just to add some experience:
• you probably don't want an automatic in Italy - too many hills and tight bends.
• I agree Sixt can be a pain. We hired a Smart saloon (at Bergamo, outside Milan) and were quite impressed until we hit one of Italy's thousands of tunnels and the dimmed headlights wouldn't come on We were about 50km from the pickup and phoned. 'What's your problem?' was the reply. We pointed out the (obvious) dangers. They (in the form of a very grumpy rep) said come back to the pickup point and we might replace it!..and you, the customer, will have to pay for the petrol. Hmmmm....so we did and met another grumpy, unsmiling rep who replaced the car with a Renault - another nice vehicle but this time with a huge crack across the windshield!
• anyway, they're cheaper than most and we're goping back to them, but reluctantly and warily.