Abused Luxury Cars Always Moved To Gold?
 

I'm only a lowly Gold member as I pay for my rentals and always take the cheapest company. With that said, I rented with Hertz a few weeks ago from PHL and could select any car from the Gold lot. I saw a 2017 XTS and jumped on it, I even went in to make sure it was supposed to be there and I wasn't going to be charged more. She said no, sometimes they put better cars in there.

After some more time in it, I think that I know why it is no longer rented as a luxury car or whatever class it originally was (The key says the class is YI). There is a huge scratch along the driver side door and rear door. There is a huge paint chip on the passenger side, there is something like paint or acid spilled on the trunk lid. As for inside, there is a replacement generic rear-view mirror--it is literally just a mirror, it doesn't even have a day-night flipper. The trunk release on the remote doesn't work, the button on the driver's side door handle doesn't work, the preference settings don't work, and every time it gets warm in the cabin and I come back to drive it, the smoke smell is unbearable.

On the good side, the navigation and XM are working. I am happy with the rental, even with the flaws, as it is better than a normal mid-size car would be. I was just wondering if this happens a lot with Hertz. It's like how U-Haul trucks have to have a certain amount of miles on them before they take them out of the fleet--those are the ones that you are stuck with on a local rental. Does Hertz just rent it as a Gold class until it has enough miles that they can take it out of the fleet? BTW, it has 26000 now.

I think you got "lucky". Hertz tends to be stingy with luxury cars even if they're beat up. If that car was at DCA they'd probably be putting it in the upgrade upcharge section...