annaschummi

Me in Antwerp right now as well.
Yeah, never tanking on highways in Italy, prices are up to 50c more than just exiting.
On Waze app or PrezziBenzina one can find the best solution in the surroundings.

Lefly

That's a new one for me. At least for gas (not diesel)
Last time I went in Italy, Piemonte, was middle March and gas was around 1.8/1.9 around the small city I was in, while here - I use the Macro station near home, small village outside Brussels - was 1.75.

On a second thought I don't know well prices around other places here.

bobbytables

Flew into Brindisi start of April and got a 500L (awful car, but the car is not the point, it's not a motoring trip) for ~1600 EUR for a month. Booked it a couple of days before arriving. Europcar. Extended it by a week last minute by calling the rental station the day before the rental ended, was no problem and same daily rate. Certainly doesn't feel like there's any shortage of cars, but I guess that could come next month. Anyway, I maintain as I always have that booking far in advance is usually the worst choice you can make.

stut

Ah, I'm not fussed about the actual car - as long as it gets us about, it'll be fine. My first car was a Fiat Uno with an overenthusiastic choke, so I'm sure I'll cope In the end, I've got two refundable bookings - one fairly expensive one at the airport, and one fairly cheap one at the station - both are being tracked. So if things do get booked out, at least I'm covered (it'll be August, but not quite Ferragosto, so there's that).

Petrol rates here are around the £1.65 (€1.95) mark, and diesel £1.82 (€2.16). But I do think we'll be using the trains as well.

13901

I'd have a Uno over a 500L any day of the week. There's no redeeming that car and I have a personal grudge with Zastava for allowing itself to be used to build it.

stut

Well, I have now been on my trip and had a wonderful week and half in Puglia.

So, the prices didn't decrease - quite the opposite. For airport rentals, the majors were wanting upwards of €700 for 8 days by August, with a few poorly-reviewed options going down to €500.

It turned out that the AWD I was hoping to use was a corportate one, so I cancelled that option. I managed to find a refundable, pre-pay rate of around €270 (still expensive in my book, but the cheapest I coult find) at the Bari Centrale location. This was through an agency in a different country, whose T&Cs I carefully vetted to ensure you didn't need to live in or hold a licence for that country to use. The central Avis place was great - really, friendly, helpful and efficient, and sorting things out with no issue at all when it transpired that the agency had booked my reservation for a different location instead of the one they'd sent me. Was in the office and out in the car in under 5 minutes.

The taxi ride to Bari centre was great (no queue for taxis at the airport, fixed rate) as it let me suss out local driving - basically, expect anything, but nobody cares, it's all very laid back and fluid. Our car was a Citroen C3 - the kind of car I'm happy to drive, but wouldn't buy. Drove fine, plenty space, coped admirably with the narrow, dry stone wall-lined, unmade, twisting, hilly track up to our accommodation, as well as the general state of the roads. Given the restricted space at the location, picking it up from the middle of the road during rush hour and attaching our child seat was *fun*, but it all worked very well, allowing us to get hold of some foccia barese for tea and messages for the next morning.

The drop-off was equally efficient, just a couple of minutes from turning up to squiggling my signature on an iPad, and bundling our luggage into a taxi they'd called for me. So, more hassle than the airport, but no waiting times and allowed us to pick up some decent food and drink en route.

I did see quite a few commercial vehicles (particularly in tourist locations) which looked as if they'd been hired by tourists - AmicoBlu being the most prevalent. To be fair, they all looked in very good condition.

travelmad478

I’m just seeing this now after your trip is over, but for next time (any car rental, anywhere), do yourself a favor and use AutoSlash.com (created by an FTer!) I’ve been an evangelist for this website since it started operating, and it’s fantastic. You go on there first and input your car rental needs, then they send you an email with price options for various companies, and you book straight with the company you choose (it tends to be Priceline for me most of the time, with the cars coming from Hertz, Budget, Avis etc.). Somehow, AutoSlash manages to get discount codes that make the rental prices almost always cheaper—sometimes substantially so—than you can find on your own from the same companies.

The best part, though, is that once you’ve done the booking, you can AutoSlash to track your rental for better pricing. Between the initial booking and the time of the trip, they almost always manage to get the price down somehow. We’re using them for our upcoming Italy trip next month, where we are renting cars in Sicily and Sardinia. The price for a week’s rental in Sicily, for example, started out around EUR 600, but after several rounds of price drops it’s now EUR 410. Our 8-day rental in Sardinia is EUR 380.

I’m not affiliated with this company in any way, but they have been so fantastically helpful that I tell everyone I know to use them.

13901

For those of you heading over in the rice paddies and mosquito-plagued lands of the North, I found that Leasys (the leasing/car hire arm of Stellantis, i.e. Fiat+Chrysler+Peugeot+Citroen+I'm sure someone else I've forgotten) is doing some half-decent deal at about half the price of AVIS.

stut

I did indeed set up an alert with AutoSlash, but sadly they were unable to find me a better deal on this occasion. I do agree that it's a great service, though!

JMN57

FYI - Leasys rebranded as Drivalia. Drivalia is a joint venture of FCA Italy (wholly owned by Stellantis) and Credit Agricole Consumer Finance.

Had a friend (Italian who lives in San Francisco) who rented a brand new C3 from them at a good price in December. He had no complaints or hassles.

I am renting from them mid-February @ MXP. Group G (4 door crossover) for €285 (prepaid - I elected no insurance except what is mandatory - Chase Sapphire provides primary insurance for up to 30 days for me) for 4 weeks. Will report back how it goes.

For long rentals, I do a short lease with Peugeot but for a month rental generally go with conventional rental. Prices are high with "major" companies (Avis, Hertz, Enterprise, Europcar, Sixt). Best price I could find until Monday was $880 with Enterprise for a Panda/equivalent at a "major"

I think 2023 is going to shape up as difficult for car rentals so I am updating this thread with some 2023 data. Hope we can all learn how best to find decent options. For the summer, I'll do a short-lease for 3 months if available.

13901

Drivalia? Good grief, the French disease of naming companies with invented b*llocks that should sound like English but reads like a colon disease is spreading.

KLouis

I almost fully agree with you! But I say almost because "Drivalia" sounds neither English nor Italian when read in either of those two languages. Keeping your description of its sound as leading one's mind to the pathology of the distal digestive system, I think that this is based on the, now, somewhat dated idea of several big pharma companies on both sides of the pond that changed their names into something (very) vaguely reminding Latin.