Your most surprisingly unpleasant hired car?

IanMSpencer

Of course the joy of a car hire is that you don't get to test the car you hire - without jumping through hoops you take what you are given.

I was in Spain recently (very pleasant roads and drivers) and had the joy of renting a Renault Scenic Dci. This was an upgrade on the promised Kia Cee'd or Megane (min 90hp guaranteed!).

I have driven a variety of cars but aside from the odd courtesy car, the only time I've driven bread and butter cars is hiring. Last year I had an uninspiring but not entirely unpleasant Peugeot 20whatevernumbertheyareupto, but it was a bit underpowered so thought we'd go up a couple of groups. Last car I drove was a Fiesta which was pretty pleasant to drive aside from poor visibility. So what did £230 for two weeks get me?

On the face of it a cross-over with all the gadgets, stop/start, turbo diesel, auto lights auto-wipers, digital display, in car entertainment, cruise control and speed limiter and lots of buttons.

You'd think that by now, all the manufacturers would just know how to make a useable gearbox - our Audi Q3 simply sucks the gear into place with the lightest of touches so how come Renault make something that reminded me of an Austin Princess puddin stirrer - rubbery, stiff to engage and a reverse gear oddly placed so it didn't seem like it could be engaged.

The management obviously decided an ergonomist was not required for this project - 5th gear was literally at full stretch, yet they placed the electronic handbrake even beyond that at the front of the console on the passenger side.

But you do get lots of buttons - but where are the right ones? The display was in Spanish (as was the manual) but hunting around, after failing to get the dozen or so buttons related to the SatNav to do anything (it was disabled) I noticed some hidden away on the middle of the dash. After altering the dash to a garish set of other colours, I did find something which looked like it might be languages and succeeded in changing the messages into English.

However, I wanted to find the menu option for resetting the tyre pressure warning (I had checked the tyre pressures and they were fine). Pressing these menu buttons did nothing. Eventually I gave in and Googled. Surprise, surprise, there was a third system of buttons - on the end of the wiper stalk, these two buttons changed some more options and by experimenting, pressing one of them for a long press did a selection.

Then there were the phone/volume buttons on the steering wheel column.

Steering was so solid at speed it took physical effort to steer.

Slightly more disconcerting was plugging my phone into the USB socket to charge it, the engine glitched. Inspiring.

I expect car radios to be baffling, so I impressed myself by linking my phone to bluetooth in Spanish (hadn't found the menu yet) in less than 15 minutes (had to delete an existing connection). It did of course have an entirely separate set of buttons to operate its menus (that still displayed on the main screen).

So, here I am driving a car on hairpinned mountain roads with a gearbox which takes several seconds to change gear and an unreachable handbrake with heavy steering.

Engine was ok. Doors had that uninspiring clang that only Mazda aspire to these days.

Is it really that hard to engineer a usable car these days.

Have you been surprised by a really poor car when you've been hiring?

lincroft1710

Over 30 yrs ago hired a Citroen 2CV on Corsica, had none of the problems you've experienced. I really liked the luxury touches - aircon, open the roof or open the windows (just flip bottom half of the horizontally divided window upwards until it locks in place). In car entertainment - arguing with passenger about which way to go at junction.

Back in the 1950s before we had a car, my father used to hire a Ford Popular 103E to take us on the 160 mile trip to our holiday destination. Now that really was luxury - wind up windows! Just 3 speeds meant no worries about being in too low or too high a gear. No worries about exceeding 70 mph on motorways - no motorways then, no 70 mph speed limit and in any case the Pop had a max of 60 mph!

abacab

A well used citroen ax in Tenerife in 1989 with a detachable gearstick!Oooo the fun we had!

ilikewatch

For work I normally get given pretty mundane hire cars, so was pretty excited to be given a brand new Lexus hybrid (350 something), however, then discovered that it was an automatic, and had a "parking brake pedal" roughly where the clutch pedal would be in a manual (I normally drive a manual) - the following 300 mile journey was "interesting" and erratic.

worried_jim

Vauxhall nova in The Canaries, early 90's. Would sit in it turning the engine on and off putting fumes in the exhaust causing a massive back fire. Then at the top of a mountain turned the engine off and managed to coast for 14km before having to power on again.

Thrashed the pants off it. Happy times.

forgotmyname

Cavalier with about 400 miles on the clock. My usual car was an SD1 V8 Auto, so the little Cavalier needed some stirring.

Not racing a Dolomite Sprint i sort of forgot to change gear and at 70mph in 2nd it made a funny buzzing noise and died.. oops..
Stuck it into 4th and just let it roll. Luckily it fired back up.

Feel sorry for the buyer of that car. I always wondered how it fared in later life.

Stoke

When I was younger, I had a lovely little 106 Quicksilver 1.4 that was smashed up the rear end near Stafford.

As I was young, they had to give me a small car (insurance), I was given a Peugeot 107 1.0 with about 1000 miles on the clock. It was completely grim. Seats were uncomfortable. Handled dreadfully. Had a cluster with only a speedo and a fuel gauge and just felt in a very small tin can. Worlds away from the 106 in just general build quality as well.

DoaM

Back in the day we used to have Montegos as company pool cars. If you were assigned one for a trip then you knew some of the essential items to take were:

* an adjustable spanner
* a suitable nut and shake-proof washer
* a stanley knife

... the splines on the windscreen wiper blades (where it mounts on the spindle) were made of cheese, so you'd need to cut off the plastic cover and fit the nut and washer to allow the wipers to work.

oldagetraveller

I once hired a "classic" Mini, many years ago to drive from S.Wales to Manchester. I had never driven one and was really looking forward to it. During the journey it nearly rattled my teeth out, scrambled my brain and really assaulted my backside.
It was only after arriving at my destination and checking the tyres, I found their pressures to be 50 - 60psi - yes 60psi, far in excess of the maximum allowed.
Much nicer ride back though, after reducing those pressures!

[Deleted User]

That would be the VW Polo we had on Corfu. As delivered to the hotel in the morning it had no first gear, by the end of the day there was no second or reverse either. At the point reverse decided to stop working, the car was parked pointing downhill with the front against an earth bank. The air was blue as the GF and I tried to push it back up the hill.

We used to have some Chrysler Alpines at work, they used to have a pinch bolt on the bottom of the steering column that chewed the toe off your shoe when you put your foot on the pedal.

[Deleted User]

DoaM wrote: »

... the splines on the windscreen wiper blades (where it mounts on the spindle) were made of cheese

They were made of metal on my old Mini, but when it corroded I had to drive home from work leaning over the passengers lap whilst the offside wiper wiped the water off the bonnet instead of the windscreen.