CCAR or ECAR in Canada?
 

Hi,

If I rent a small car with Hertz in Canada, which class gives me a higher chance of a 4 door vehicle? ECAR or CCAR? They are offered at the same price.

Originally I though that the first letter indicates a larger car if it comes later in the alphabet (except when there is a number involved), but I'm not sure about that any more.

Thank you for answering my very basic question. :-)

Two door cars are, at leat in Toronto, are very rare. The only ones I currently see are Volvo C30s (YC), and I only get them for asking.

I don't use the 4 letter codes so don't know what ECAR is.

One is called Economy and one is called Compact. That doesn't tell me much.

Economy is generally smaller than compact. Check out the US Fleet List; in most cases it applies to Canada as well.

-J.

Agreed. There are even notes when there are noticed differences. When I was last at YYZ, I did not notice economy cars (never rent them), there were a few Golf 2.5s (YB) which I like. For Compact, the choices were older Corollas, Jetta 2.0 (utter crap car), and Toyota Matrix, along with the Volvo C30

Brian.

I took Compact (B) and was upgraded to C - a Ford Fiesta. I'm surprised that this is a C given how small it is. But that's OK for me, I just needed it for a few days to get places. It drives OK. But the seat is the most uncomfortable car seat I had in a loooong time.

That's shocking that it's a C. Does it really say C on the key tag or was it YB? YB would also be an "upgrade" from B, technically.

-J.

I don't remember what it said on the key tag. It said C on one of the things I received upon pickup and I remember thinking "I would have been disappointed if I had paid for C". But I can't find that source now. Everything I can find says that I ordered B and that I am being billed B. So maybe it IS a B-car and it was just wrong in one place (like someone seeing "CCAR" and putting that down as C, which it is not).

After pickup I was more focused on the fact that they charged me for extras (children seats) that had shown up for free online (and in my booking confirmation). I was in a hurry so I checked the papers only later on, found the substantial markup (about 77%), enquired over the phone, and then went back to show them my booking confirmation. They did take those extra charges off.

In the end we didn't even use the seats. I had taken them "just in case" because they were free. We have a family member who is in hospital and maybe we would have needed to shuttle her kids to/from school/hospital/etc. But in the end other people took care of that.