Car Hire Review

Since I seem to be spending a lot of my life driving up and down the M6 and A1 in hire cars at the moment, I thought to provide me with some level of amusment I would write reviews on the assortment of cars that I’ve done it in. My company very kindly lay on a hire car for each journey so it’s always a bit exciting waiting for it to be delivered to see what it’s like. So far the hire company have given me a different car each time but this will no doubt change as time goes on.

Note that I don’t get to choose the car, merely the class of car, this being engine size which invariably means a better car for some reason.

Ford Focus 1.8 petrol
I’ve been a bit lazy, mainly because a)it won’t be long before I’m not driving hire cars, and b)I’ve been given a succession of the same hire cars as previously.
Anyway, I’ve had the same focus for three weeks now. They just leave it outside the house for the 4 days I’m not using it.  Not a bad car, it’d be great as a family car for sure. Fuel consumption is ok if you drive like an old lady, terrible if you floor it.  Handles great! Really hard to get it sliding and wheelspinning, even in the wet. PLenty of power although it’s still lacking the proper ummpph! you get from a big diesel turbo.

This one is a bit basic but it’s reasonably put together, stereo is ok, it’s not too noisy inside and once I finally got the seat sorted it’s quite comfortable.

Bad bits? Errm, I;ve thought and haven’t really got any .

Win, I guess. It’s not a very inspiring car. I know the car tv program people like focuses and say they’re brilliant to drive but I don’t get it myself. I’m clearly a rubbish petrol head. Give me a car with too much power and not enough grip for an entertaining and challenging drive every time.

Peugot 207 Estate
Now I wanted to dislike this car what with it being French and all and it was very basic inside, no cruise control, nasty cheap interior but honestly, it made me eat my own feelings about French cars. For a start nothing fell off it and nothing broke or was broke on delivery. The engine was a little trooper and pulled really well (1.6 diesel). The car handled very well indeed and I was really chucking it about on the way home and the fuel economy was amazing. 26 quid of diesel for a round trip of 300 miles, excellent. Surprisingly comfy too.

Vauxhall Zafira
Lets start with the good stuff first. The engine, which is clearly exactly the same that’s in the vectra, is great. Masses of grunt, wheelspins in third in the wet. It’s surprisingly Ok to drive too. Boot is humungous.
Bad stuff then. They gave me the base model so no toys, no cruise control.
Really bad stuff then. It comes with those stupid electronic wiper and indicator stalks. They are totally crap although I am starting to get used to them a bit. The daftest fucking thing in the entire car though, is the centre console. The handbrake has deviated from a design that still exists in most cars today from a simple, lever with a button on the end to something that looks like the throttle control on an F16. Horrible. Plus, they’ve placed the only coffee cup holder right in the middle of it so when you try to put a cup of coffee (regular) in there, the lid pops off and you pour coffee everywhere. Do I speak from experience? Yep. It’s not very comfy neither.

Update!!!: Well it had to happen sooner or later, one of these cars broke down. I always assumed it would be one of the French cars but there you go. The Zafira wouldn’t start so after 40 minutes stood in a cold and wet car park waiting for the AA man to turn up I finally got moving again. Turns out the cover on the fuse box wasn’t on properly so water was getting inside. Eventually the relay that controls the radiator fan shorted out and so the fan ran all day and drained the battery. AA removed the relay and restarted the car for me, seems fine now.

Renault Scenic
Obviously because it’s French, it’s shite but more importantly, it has to be delivered with broken things, it’s the French way. So here we go. No real parcel shelf covering meaning I was worried about leaving things in the boot. Cruise control didn’t work. Radio would not tune into any station worth listening to.
Things that broke while I was driving it: The rear windscreen wiper gave up the ghost. And the traffic reporting changed fromnormal to ‘SHOUTING REALLY FUCKING LOUD NOT TO MENTION GIVING ME UPDATES FROM STOKE TO SCOTLAND’, again, thanks.
Things that were just generally shite: Everything really. I could not get comfy at all, my back was killing me when I got home. The engine was so weak I could have cycled faster in places. Fuel consumption was terrible. I’ve driven about ten hire cars in the last two months and they generally use about 42 quid of diesel over three days. This used 55 quid over one day. Rear view mirror was ridiculous. Wing mirrors were so large I could see the moon in them. Noisy as fuck. Here you go sir, this is the advanced model, we do lots of clever things like bluetooth integration and buttons to control the stereo. Oh, you want to use them? Christ, we’d not thought about that. That’s why we put all the switch gear behind everything so you can’t see any of the buttons.
Right. So what’s quite fundamental to a driver? You want to see what speed you’re going? There it is, over by the passenger’s left knee. The speed display was ridiculously positioned, as were all the displays. They were all over to the right, way too far. And if you;re above 5′ 9″ you;re too tall to actually see anything because they;ve put a lip on the dash which covers it all up.

BIG PILE OF CRAP!!!!

Ford Mondeo
Great car! Virtually faultless. Very comfy, nice and quiet on the motorway, reasonably powerful (although it did feel a little low on power for a 2 litre), boot was big enough to fit my road bike in plus all my cycling gear and office gear plus an overnight bag and my laptop bag. The front windscreen embedded de-icer is good, but not as good as I wanted it to be. The rear windscreen clears of ice in a minute or so while the front takes a lot longer, probably due to the wire thicknesses. Still, it’s better than a normal windscreen where you have towait for the engine to heat up to blow hot air on to it. If I had a complaint other than the slightly weak engine (and don’t get me wrong, it was pokey enough, just a bit weak compared to say the Vectra or my car), it would be the switch gear inside. Not that it was crap or cheap but each set seemed to have been chosen completely at random from the switch gear catalogue. The centre panel switches were grey, the steering wheel switches were a mixture of bright shiny silver (which looked crap) and black, the stalks were black and none of it seemd to match, it all looks a bit shit really.

Oh, and as far as I could tell the car had no fog lights which was a bit bizarre.

Vauxhall Insignia
This was the first car given to me and what a great introduction. Really comfortable, lots of toys, quite powerful, cruise control which is always nice in a car being used for motortway miles. Really could not fault this car, quite sad to give it back.
Update: I got another one, lovely car but this one had a 1.6 petrol engine. Really quite how vauxhall thought that anyone rich enough to buy an insignia would be happy with an engine that couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding is beyond me. I had fiestas and low end astras overtaking me on the A66!

Edit: The one I’ve just had clearly had a bigger engine in it, not sure what though. Petrol, still piss weak but get it spinning and it went OK. I hate petrol cars now. So noisy and crap torque. Boot is too small too, struggled to get a bike and all my gear inside it. Very nice, comfy drive though.

Peugeot Estate 308 SW
Concious that they had given me the best car they had last week, the rental compaby quickly made sure they delivered the worst they had in the garage this week. Read all about it below.

On delivery bits that didn’t work were…
Windscreen washer pump.
Passenger elecric window.
The gearbox. (I say it was broken on delivery, it actually changed gear but there was a significant delay between moving the stick to the appropriate position, and the gearbox actually feeling like it had got there – so it must have been broke in some way)
The engine. I dunno, maybe three cylinders weren’t firing, it’s the only explanation I can find for such a weak piece of shit.

Things that broke while it was being driven….
The MPG readout would vary from 15 to 999 with 17 other numbers inbetween in a 5 second period and then jam on 47mpg. This would not change unless I cycled through the options upon it would do the same and then stop on 47mpg again. NO MATTER HOW HARD I WAS PUSHING THE ACCELERATOR.
The radio. It was shit to start with but after about ten minutes it forgot how to find radio stations and no matter what I did, would only flick it’s way through the entire radio spectrum before stopping on 95.4 church radio leaving me with approximately 10 more hours sat in a car with no music.
The fuel gauge.
And something kept making a weesh sound near the back of the car.

Things that were just crap anyway……
Switch gear. Made out of soft cheese.
Turning circle. Fair enough, it’s an estate but really, I’m sure you should be able to manouver it into a space at ASDA a bit easier than with an 11 point turn. I drove a transit van today for a few hours and that was more manouverable.

Things that were good about it…
errm…
um……
Aah! You could see a lot of stuff out of the windows.
I got to give it back to the hire company when I got home.

Volkswagon Passat
Not bad at all. Seriously well put together. Everything felt really solid and tight Extremely comfortable to drive a long way in. After 4 hours driving I still felt fine. Considering the engine is the same as in my wife’s Audi (2.0Tdi), it felt fairly weak. It also came with an automatic parking brake which took a fiar bit of getting used to. I stalled it a few times until I figured out you have to change your driving style. Don’t gradually roll up to a halt and then try moving away just as you’re stopping. Roll up, stop precisely until you feel the auto brake come on, then you can prepare to move off. Also the cruise control only worked in 5mph steps, a bit odd. Boot was humungous too, you could easily get a couple of bodies in that one.

update: The second passat they gave me was the top end model. Leather seats, heated seats, assorted electrical accompanyments. Absolutely beautiful to sit in, extremely comfy but again, they gave me the 110psi model which is just hopelessely underpowered.

Vauxhall Vectra
The handbrake is so close to the central arm rest that I can’t take it off without sticking my elbow up in the air like a funky chicken. The cruise control control is so tiny I couldn’t find it for a while. It took me ages to figure out how to open the boot (press the open button twice on the fob) but the biggest problem is those stupid, stupid electronic stalks. The windscreen wipers and the indicators go on for no reason that I can fathom and the conditions upon which they go off is presumably tied into the ‘which pop star is cool’ public opinion charts. This wouldn’t be a major issue if I could see the indicator lights, or indeed hear the gnats fart clicking that they make.

Engine was great though, plenty of grunt.

Vauxhall Astra

Little two door, 1.6 petrol version. Engine was nice and zippy once it got spinning, bit basic inside but it was a pretty low model. Good handling especially compared to the barges I’m used to driving. Uncomfy for long journeys. I drove 4 hours straight coming home and my back and legs were killing me. Everything was a bit cramped inside. Really bad bits were the boot which was fecking tiny, I had to get a roadbike in it and even with both wheels off, there was no way it was fitting in. The rear view mirror though was especially mental. For a start it was so big it literally blocked out half the windscreen. I had to keep ducking to see what was behind it. When I was looking in the mirror itself, it gave me a great view of  the back seats, the parcel shelf, most of the roof and and there, right in the middle was the tiny, tiny rear window. Bonkers. Dunno if the car was designed for ladies but presumably they would sit even further forward than I do which would make matters even worse.

3 Comments

• 

  By Dave, May 12, 2010 @ 1:32 pm

  i was thinking my missus should be doing this as well. She’s been doing a lot of driving to tamworth, p’borough etc so far i think she’s had

  astra x2
  corsa
  new megane
  focus x2
  golf
  vectra

  I recall she mentioned a significant drop in power between two identically engined astras.. clearly QC isn’t something vauxhall have!

• 

  By admin, May 12, 2010 @ 10:30 pm

  Aye. I’d like to be given a golf or a focus just to see what the new ones are like but so far, the Mondeo’s are head and shoulders above the rest of the cars I’ve been given. Really good car. Insignia’s are next but with a decent engine.

• 

  By Nick, August 22, 2010 @ 3:02 pm

  The Vauxhall Zafira is the only car I’ve ever driven with less grunt and more body roll than a 2CV.

  I’ve never had a Vectra as a hire car that braked in a straight line; they always pulled one way or the other. Plus the seats are crippling after more than thirty minutes. Vauxhall interiors are designed by masochists. Mondeo pisses all over them for 400 mile journey comfort.

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