Taking a page from TravelEd, I figured there was a place here for my behind-the-wheel review of our rental cars. While I wasn’t able to rent the real good shit like Kent recently did, there are actually a few brief stories with half the cars, stateside and abroad! But like I said, it’s not what you’re thinking…
Disclaimer: This is a long read with 6 feature cars. Only regulars need continue 
Rental Car #1: 2007 Mazda 5. Rented from Enterprise as a one way rental from Corvallis to the Portland Airport. OSU employee rate of only $50. By my math, two one ways is actually cheaper than gas and 16 day econo parking at the airport. Not to mention a fairly new rental should be more reliable than our 86 VW Dog Car; our only car at the moment.
Pro’s: Surprisingly nice interior, good visibility, low profile tires on alloys, and more than enough room for our trip to the airport. And I have to say, it’s not a bad looking vehicle for what it is.
Con’s: Buzzy motor in this model and it’s not worth the effort to research the specs. Adequate for freeway use, but made an otherwise nice vehicle feel cheap. Plus the ride height and aggressive front fascia could be an issue…
With an unscheduled stop at the Woodburn Outlets, we were still doing well on time. With only about 10 minutes to the airport on I-205, we were in heavy traffic in the left lane when a huge piece of metal was presented right in front of us. The Sprinter van ahead of us swerved and missed it somehow, but we weren’t so lucky, collecting what looked like a car door skin right under the front of our car. And it was totally stuck there, pinned under the car at 65ish miles per hour, grinding, sparking and really scaring the hell out of us in a period of milliseconds. I realized it wasn’t coming out and of course we weren’t getting any help with people moving out of the way for us. So we moved left into the median, where I hoped I could kind of hop the front end over the dirt and mud median. No luck, still there. So I stop the car and figure I’m going to get dirty and try to pull it out from under the car - and as quickly as possible since I was feeling quite vulnerable on the side of the freeway. But even that plan was soon dashed when I got out and saw coolant gushing out of the front end. Shit!! It was starting to set in that we might not be making our flight that day.
But Enterprise Rent-a-car saved the day, literally. I called our Corvallis office where we had signed for the car a few hours earlier, and explained our situation: “stranded car a few miles from the airport, going to miss international flight. Very bummed!” And the crew sprang into superhero action. They located the nearest rental office to our location and sent out a replacement rental. All within 40 minutes of our dilemma. I knew there was a chance when the agent arrived informed and ready to go explaining that all he needed was a signature and insisted we leave immediately to make our flight.
Rental Car #2: Ford F150 Crew Cab 4×4. Rented from Clackamas Enterprise. No charge rescue vehicle.
I threw our bags into the bed of the truck and looked for an opening from the median, in the dirt and mud, closest to the fast lane. I found an opening and feathered the gas. No discernable engine noise and we weren’t really moving too quickly. More gas. Some noise now and we’ve found pavement. Still not really going anywhere. More gas. Now the back-end steps out, and really surprised me as I realized we were pulling a sweet Dukes of Hazzard maneuver with that huge V8 working two huge rooster tails and spinning the tires onto the freeway! I would’ve been embarrassed normally, but we were back on track, and might even make our flight!!
Meanwhile, my wife hasn’t even noticed my antics because she’s falling in love with our monster truck. “This is really nice. It doesn’t feel like we’re going 55 and I can see really well. It has more room than our Golf and has a truck bed.” Translation: I should get more dogs and carry them around in my truck. “You could tow the race car around.” Even in my imagination she has a sales pitch that includes my interests!
Not actual car, but looked just like this one:
I want to sincerely thank Enterprise for really stepping up and delivering fantastic service. We made our flight and had we been even 5 minutes later, we would’ve missed our flight (no lie). Many thanks Enterprise!!
Rental Car #3: Mercedes C180 Kompressor. Rented for 2 days from Weissenberg Europcar. Ended up being $110US per day, which is pretty damn good and I’d bet you can’t rent a C class in the U.S. for less. And this is thanks to my sister’s outstanding assistant, Claudia. She made sure we scored their corporate rate (15% off) while I was visiting.
Here are a couple of pics from the Weisessenberg Europcar rental office of their Volkswagen Polo G40 race car:
Pro’s: It’s a Merc and I’m on vacation, it has E-code Xenon’s, 17″ summer tires are fitted for spring, heated seats, park distance front and rear, partial leather, a supercharger, great suspension, an a huge pointed star in the grill.
Con’s: It has an incredible gaudy pointed star in the grill and filling it up cost nearly 70 Euros! The conversion rate made it even more difficult to stomach. It was 1=1.64 when we were there and I wasn’t even filling with Premium (though their regular is like 96 octane). Other complaints include stupid rain sensing wipers that have a mind of their own, and a transmission slipping issue that caused no power delivery after being in nearly idle traffic for too long! This caught us a couple of times, including once heading out of Frankfurt just when three lanes off stalled traffic had finally opened up!
Then we crept along for what seemed like forever behind this lovely Porsche 997 Carrera 4S. In metro areas, 997’s were very common and I started referring to them as the German Camaro:
And here are some nice pics of our C180 Kompressor:
German sedans and avants grow on trees in Germany, but our car was nearly brand new and stood amongst the nicer cars in most areas. We were very lucky indeed - Thank you Claudia!!
Guest Ride Report - 2008 Audi A4 2.0TDi Avant, aka my Sister’s totally sweet company car! My sister is a bit of a ‘higher up’ at Alfmeier in Treutchlingen and drives a car that proves it. In the U.S. cars are status symbols. They are in Germany as well, but not in the same way. In the U.S. you can draw easy conclusions with people who drive Firebirds, Honda Accords, Hummer H2’s, and Toyota Prius cars. The car represents the personality of the driver. In Germany, it’s all about the features, badging, and custom order cars. And my Sister’s car is a standout. A custom order A4 Avant, with the uprated 2 liter turbo diesel and Quattro. And badging to match. Many German customers order badge delete because they want the features but don’t want to draw attention. My sister was cautioned against leaving the badges off in fact when she ordered!
Long story short, it’s a sweet car and she knows how to drive on the Autobahn. Nuff said. Check out the pics of her 2008 Black Metallic Audi A4 Avant:
Those pics in the snow were on back roads in the German Alps that led to cross country ski areas. See more on my Flickr stream set Euro Trip 2008. I’ll be adding more as get them post processed.
What a fantastic car. Beautiful color combo, fast, handles great, and enough room for the hounds.
Rental Car #4: Mercedes A150, rented from Europcar. We were intending to take the train from Treutchlingen to Nuerenberg, but discovered that we should’ve considered rail pass because tickets were not nearly as cheap without, which made a rental car, one more befitting our budget, a better choice. We got this car for only 176 for 3 days. Here’s some pics I took on the trip to the Hockenheim Ring, which I’ll feature in another post.
Pro’s: Bigger than it’s awkward shape suggests, great feature set including navi, and very good gas mileage.
Con’s: The 1.5 is just enough to get you to 140kph, but much more than that and it’s short wheelbase makes the car fairly twitchy. But a nice car that will unfortunately never find it’s ways to our shores. Shame.
Rental Car #5: Dodge Avenger, rented from Enterprise from PDX to Corvallis.
It had been a long day. We left for Neurenberg in our A150 at 3:00AM (-9 hours PST). We landed at PDX over 17 hours later, still had a 2 hour drive left, and I had only managed an hour and half of sleep on the plane — though we had the most excellent airport breakfast during our layover in Amsterdam. Incredible coffee, with cream provided by Satan, bacon, sausage, extra creamy scrambled eggs, baked beans, toast, and fresh squeezed O.J. It was about 8:30 local time and the table of 6 headed for a ski vacation next to us all ordered a round of Heinekins. We’ll have to make sure to come back here for a few days sometime soon, these people have their shit together! (Sorry for the long segway, but what the Hell, I’m tipsy and this article is already ten pages too long and you’re still reading!)
So the Dodge Avenger. I’m not going to lie. Compared to the other Daimler Chrysler products I had just enjoyed, this was a piece of shit. The interior sucked, visibility sucked, the transmission hunted around and generally felt cheap… You get the idea. It got us home and without incident; the only Pro I can think of. I was exhausted by the time we got home and the car didn’t inspire picture taking. Here’s someone else’s photo of a similar car on Flickr.
Not all the cars were necessarily note worthy, but I hope you enjoyed the comparo 
dc
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