Rental car review
 

Man, I used to have a great thread with this title in the 90s, and it's long gone. I actually went searching for it, and then remembered, oh that was the 90s, that version of Cellar is no longer available.

This week I am renting a modern Dodge Charger. To sum up:

It's a piece of shit Dodge, But, to be fair, it's a tribute to a piece of shit Dodge.

My apologies to the muscle car enthusiasts. I know there are those among us who like this sort of thing. It does go really fast, and that is fun, and makes you feel good for a while.

Just like in the 70s, the car is too long, the suspension is boat-like, the steering gives you no sense of the road, and the brake pedal is touchy.

The dash is all laid out in a blocky all-italics font which I find to be hilariously cheesy. I wouldn't buy a $30k car and then have to look at that font every time I was in it. What cartoonland are we in, FFS.

82 HP per liter.

LOL

A preemptive strike!

I dug into the settings, like you should not do on a rental. You actually can tune the steering through these settings:

"Normal", which is your standard big American car power steering;

"Sport", which means there is a bit more resistance in the wheel, mimicking what it might feel like if you were actually feeling the road;

"Comfort", which means there is a bit less resistance in the wheel, mimicking the American big boat power steering of the 70s.

You can change the steering setting while on the move. I don't understand why you should be able to do that. It's impressive that it works.

The key fobs are hilariously enormous.

h ah aha

How does she donut?

I didn't take the coverage, so don't know.

I can tell you that this thing burns out hard on wet surfaces. Oh you still wanted to go fast but it's raining? Sorry. Traction is overrated! I would not take this thing into any kind of snow.

I have rented only a few cars over the years, but recently I have to go to San Francisco (three hours away) several times and my 1992 Nissan Pathfinder with its five speed, no AC and not too good fuel economy, while a very satisfactory ride in the hinterland, is not at its best there.
So far I have gotten a Chevy Impala, a base model Hyundai, a Ford Focus Hybrid and a Toyota Camry.
Six hours in each of these in stop and go freeway traffic, gridlocked city hills and the hottest day in SF history actually turned out to make renting a good plan, especially with Enterprise foolishly picking up the fuel tab.
What it did not do was show me a car that I would want to own.
At times they were noisy, underpowered, uncomfortable, had poor visibility, vague handling and incredibly complex and confusing displays and geegaws.
For between $60 and $80 for 24 hours they seemed a fair deal and made for telling, but disappointing, test drives.
It felt good to get back in my Pathy each time.

Momdigr's last rental was a Ford Focus.

Traction, or the lack of, was not an issue.

It wouldn't have spun the tires on polished ice.



Popdigr once rented a no-mileage-fee Cadillac with the 300 hp Northstar from Alamo ($29 a day). They went on vacay and wound up putting a little over 6000 miles on it. When they returned it the guy at the counter almost shit when he saw the mileage.

That may be the engine that Italians designed to replace so many crappy Chrysler engines. Same improvements also appeared in Jeep engines.

But Sergio Marchionne died suddenly. The unanswered question is whether Chrysler will continue an over 20 year process of scrapping / redesigning virtually all crappy Chrysler/Jeep products.

BTW, one reason we know he was productive - he did not cut off blood to his brain by wearing his napkin (a tie) everywhere.

My biggest concern when renting a car is that they haven't connected two keyfobs together, or if they have, the loop is through a part that can detach from the fob.

As long as I don't have two keyfobs awkwardly connected with stiff cable in my pocket, I'm relatively happy.

It sounds like speed sensitive steering. Once going over 8 MPH, power steering really make driving more dangerous. For example, a driver cannot feel the road.

My 1986 Accord had it. I loved it. For example, if the road suddenly became icy, a driver immediately could feel it. And then safely slowed down. GMs "big bucket of bolts" claims that problem was fixed by expensive anti-lock brakes. Which did nothing to avert ice skidding. Did not matter. Most of us automatically believe sound byte propaganda - also called lies.

Those setting adjustments probably control a tiny valve in the power steering pump. "Big bucket of bolts" would leave the valve always fully open. "Sport" would be the valve fully or almost fully closed at higher speeds. And open only when under 8 MPH - the only time power steering is really needed.

Oh no, oh yeah they have, these two monster-size fobs are Enterprise'd together with a strong cable.

Enterprise always does this. I actually cut one of these cables once - they put the fobs together in such a way that they would hit each other's buttons. Eff that ess.

wait, here ya go --

http://cellar.org/img/fobs.jpg

I could have cropped that better. Anyway, the dang things are almost as wide as my hand. They're usually in my front pocket, and everyone thinks I'm excited to be there. Is it just me? or does it turn out fobs have been growing all this time and I didn't notice?

Can you make emergency phone calls on them? :D

If I owned these things I would mark a red "DON'T" on the sixth button, so that it would read "DON'T PANIC"

those things are the size of a flip phone

each