Ford Mustang car hire in California

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  • owenjt
    owenjt Posts: 107 Forumite
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    Thanks jamesbrownontheroad. I hope it's the case that I can choose from a selection of Mustang's. Will see on Wednesday!
  • dotchas
    dotchas Posts: 2,484 Forumite
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    We have done the PCH in a Mustang and it was fab, it was my dream holiday. I hope to do it again sometime!
    :j I love bargains:j
    I love MSE
  • Roland_Sausage
    Roland_Sausage Posts: 723 Forumite
    First Anniversary First Post
    Enjoy yourself, you will love it. Just don't think you are doing something original and unique. We were in California a few months ago and there were Mustangs everywhere.

    When driving through Death Valley, it seemed like every second car was a Mustang. Sometimes 2 or 3 in a row would go past. Probably a large majority of them were rentals.

    There was also a large amount of them on California State Route 1.

    Maybe I'm just a little jealous because we had a crossover SUV thing.
  • Technoteacher
    Technoteacher Posts: 6 Forumite
    In response to the queries about car hire insurance I have just returned from 4 weeks in the USA and can confirm that UK citizens hiring cars in California are fully covered for CDW, LDW, etc by Californian State law. I had bought a stand alone policy for about £45 as advised in the MSE pages and found this to be totally unnecessary. A rare bit of MSE misinformation, i believe!
    I had booked my car through Hertz and if you trawl through their T&Cs you will see some confusing reference to the fact that the 'additional' insurance costs are included for overseas hirers. This was confirmed by the agent dealing with my paperwork at the Hertz rental outlet, as was the fact that my wife was also covered to drive the car at no extra cost. Sadly, we had a Mazda rather than a soft-top Mustang, but the principle is the same.
  • stevie11
    stevie11 Posts: 682 Forumite
    Technoteacher wrote: »
    In response to the queries about car hire insurance I have just returned from 4 weeks in the USA and can confirm that UK citizens hiring cars in California are fully covered for CDW, LDW, etc by Californian State law. I had bought a stand alone policy for about £45 as advised in the MSE pages and found this to be totally unnecessary. A rare bit of MSE misinformation, i believe!
    I had booked my car through Hertz and if you trawl through their T&Cs you will see some confusing reference to the fact that the 'additional' insurance costs are included for overseas hirers. This was confirmed by the agent dealing with my paperwork at the Hertz rental outlet, as was the fact that my wife was also covered to drive the car at no extra cost. Sadly, we had a Mazda rather than a soft-top Mustang, but the principle is the same.


    Interesting thanks for that. As for your £45 policy was that not an excess policy rather than CDW, LDW etc? If so it still may have been useful for you.
  • Technoteacher
    Technoteacher Posts: 6 Forumite
    stevie11 wrote: »
    Interesting thanks for that. As for your £45 policy was that not an excess policy rather than CDW, LDW etc? If so it still may have been useful for you.

    Interesting question! Until reading more in this thread yesterday I had not been fully aware of the distinction between the various types of stand alone policy and certainly had not realised that some policies cover only any excess and are not full replacements for the CDW/LDW provided by the hire companies. However, my policy was for excess and CDW, and several other benefits such as key loss, misfuelling and admin costs which were not covered by Hertz, so you are right, the policy could still have been useful.
  • cubegame
    cubegame Posts: 2,042 Forumite
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    Technoteacher wrote: »
    Interesting question! Until reading more in this thread yesterday I had not been fully aware of the distinction between the various types of stand alone policy and certainly had not realised that some policies cover only any excess and are not full replacements for the CDW/LDW provided by the hire companies. However, my policy was for excess and CDW, and several other benefits such as key loss, misfuelling and admin costs which were not covered by Hertz, so you are right, the policy could still have been useful.



    Car hire insurance in the US, as provided by the inclusive packages available to UK visitor have never had an excess so an excess policy is never necessary for this purpose.


    The US renters don't work on the loss-leading headline price business model of their European counterparts.


    However, insurance doesn't cover such things as keys, windows, the underside of the vehicles and wheels/tyres so there is a need for cover.
  • owenjt
    owenjt Posts: 107 Forumite
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    UPDATE!

    I've returned from my holiday and got the convertible mustang :) Awesome car and loved driving it, especially with the top down in the California sun. Luggage also fitted in fine btw!

    StxSjfT.jpg

    So, in the end, I booked through budget.com. You are able to book as a UK resident and do not have to choose their insurance options - these are expensive and you're better off using a third party to get insurance.

    I paid £600 for 2 weeks hire. I then purchased my insurance for £62. I would highly recommend checking out www.moneymaxim.co.uk for insurance - there's lots of useful info and cheap policy recommendations. I ended up phoning them up for some advice and they were extremely helpful and I purchased a policy through Bettersafe. I also phoned Budget in LA to check that they were happy to accept a policy from a third party - apparently some rental companies are a bit funny about this as they want to sell their own policies to get more money out of you!

    When I actually picked up the car from Budget they obviously tried to sell me additional things. We did end up purchasing two options - one was a policy that meant if the car broke down they would come to us and collect and replace it (the standard policy means you're responsible for getting the car to a Budget location) and the other was a full tank of fuel so we could take it back empty (in hindsight I wouldn't have taken this as I think it's easier to take it back full than empty and end up paying less). It cost £144 for both of these.

    The only other cost we incurred (apart from fuel) was for toll roads. There's a e-Toll service which means whenever you drive on a toll road it's automatically charged to your credit card. Now we were told we would drive on a toll road so should take this option. What we didn't know until after we got home is that in addition to the actual toll road charges, Budget charge a 'convenience fee' of $3.95 for each day of the entire rental period, including any days on which e-Toll is not used, up to a maximum of $19.75 per rental month. So instead of paying $6 for the one toll road we went on, we paid $19.75 (£19.70). I did recheck my booking emails and noticed this was mentioned in a small box at the bottom of an email (which I missed). Apparently Budget are not the only rental company to do this, so keep in mind!

    So in the end it cost us £600 (hire) + £62 (insurance) + £144 (breakdown cover and full tank of fuel) + £19.70 (e-toll) = £825.70.

    On budget.co.uk it was £1,100 including insurance (I'm not sure if this included the additional breakdown cover). With the toll and full tank of fuel this would've cost us around £1,170, so you can see we made a significant saving by not using the UK website.

    I hope this helps other people save money on their USA car hire. You do not need to book through a UK website!
    Technoteacher wrote: »
    In response to the queries about car hire insurance I have just returned from 4 weeks in the USA and can confirm that UK citizens hiring cars in California are fully covered for CDW, LDW, etc by Californian State law. I had bought a stand alone policy for about £45 as advised in the MSE pages and found this to be totally unnecessary. A rare bit of MSE misinformation, i believe!

    This isn't correct. You were just covered for these things becuase Hertz include it in their rental. Not all rental companies do this. With Budget I had the choice of including CDW, LDW etc in my car hire but I chose not to as it's very expensive.
  • Gavin83
    Gavin83 Posts: 8,746 Forumite
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    When I went to the states I bagged myself a brand new 5l V8 Mustang and I loved it, especially the growl it made. I can't blame you for opting for the Mustang at all.

    I think the next time I do a US road trip I'll hire a Corvette Stingray instead.
  • stevie11
    stevie11 Posts: 682 Forumite
    edited 5 October 2018 at 8:45PM
    Owen, good to hear you had a good time in Cali and enjoyable experience with the Mustang. Was it a 2.4 or 5l?

    I assume you were fully covered for off road use and breakdown cover, that woud have been a story to tell if you had to get rescued if the tide came in lol.
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