From the March 2011 Issue of Car and Driver

There’s an old joke in our business that asks, “What’s the difference between a German shepherd and an automotive journalist?” Answer: A German shepherd feels guilty when he craps in your car. But the truth is, the so-called press cars the manufacturers lend us for evaluation get better treatment than that. Damaging a press car means professional humiliation, even if it leaves us with a good story to tell the grandkids. So when we come up with a plan for some automotive mischief—something that tests the boundaries of good judgment—we try to spare the fleet of press vehicles we rely on for our normal testing.

View Photos MARC URBANO

Rental cars, however, are an entirely different story. This story, to be more precise. We recall the words of noted author (and occasional C/D contributor) P.J. O’Rourke: “There’s a lot of debate on this subject—about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car.” That may be true, but which rented car handles best? And which agency is the best at handling your business? To find out, we put together an octathlon of events at and around the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research that would help us learn a thing or two about rental cars, as well as the agencies that rent them.

Meet Your Olympians

MARC URBANO

Event #1: The Setup

Purpose: See which rental car agency gets us into a car with the least hassle.

MARC URBANO

Arriving at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, about 80 miles from NCCAR, we review the plan. Each of the four participating staffers is to walk up to a rental car agency’s counter and request a car with all the trimmings. In order to avoid any duplication in car selection, we aim to pick up our cars one by one and work to inject some variety of style and price into the mix. En route to our first stop—Avis—via the complimentary shuttle, associate online editor Jon Yanca comments that the bus smells like urine. I say it simply smells like bus. Technical director Don Sherman opines that the red-velvet seats resemble “bordello upholstery.”

Avis

The rental lot at Avis is full of vehicles ranging from the Toyota Prius and the Nissan Cube to the Dodge Challenger and the Chevrolet Suburban. Sherman, who picks Avis as his agency, asks the clerk for a luxury car. She exhibits a fanatical devotion to Sherman’s request, rejecting the aforesaid machinery. She didn’t find anything suitable in her computerized inventory and eventually walked out to the lot herself to bring back an all-wheel-drive Cadillac CTS4.

Time: 20 minutes.

Enterprise

Next stop is an equally full Enterprise lot. While we wait in a newly renovated lobby complete with a festive Christmas tree, an employee brings out free bottled water for all of us. Associate online editor David Gluckman requests an economy car, but upon learning none is available, he immediately ratchets his aspirations skyward to the Ford Panther platform (of cab, limo, and cop-car fame), settling on a white Lincoln Town Car. The desk agent goes out to the lot with him to perform the walk-around inspection. “I have no idea how much this costs; we didn’t talk money at all,” says Gluckman as we drive to Hertz.

Time: 16 minutes.

View Photos MARC URBANO

Hertz

Hertz, the largest rental car brand in the world, has nothing to offer walk-up customers on our Monday in Raleigh. We learn this after waiting 25 minutes as a lone agent handles a line of increasingly annoyed customers. Meanwhile, Yanca and Sherman set out for Dollar. Young Yanca is looking for something fun to drive and is promptly provided with a 2011 Ford Mustang convertible. The agent requests that the interior be cleaned if any of that fun driving results in, er, interior stains.

Time: 10 minutes.

National

Rebuffed by Hertz, I get a ride to National. The lot looks picked over. I request an economy car because we are still lacking a cheap vehicle in our test fleet. The agent tries to coax the daily rate upward, fails, and then gives me a free upgrade. Taking my pick from the selection of Grand Cherokees and Caravans in the Emerald Club rows, I settle on a Jeep Compass. Hey, somebody had to rent a bottom feeder.

Time: 11 minutes.

Gold: Enterprise

Silver (tie): Avis, Dollar

Bronze: National

Approach the Desk with a Cool Head

The Agreement

Before you run off and try to swamp-buggy race your hired Aveo, take a look at the rental agreement’s fine print. The rental agency hands you a sheet of paper stating terms and conditions. You won’t read it, but you should. No amount of supplemental insurance coverage will save you if you violate these rules. Some clauses are obvious, such as warnings not to drive while intoxicated. Others are more curious. Driving on unpaved roads, towing or pushing anything, using the vehicle as a gypsy cab, or partaking in a race or speed contest—all of these violate the agreement. Go figure. Also, you cannot “with willful disregard” allow damage to the car. Now, the term “willful disregard” is a slippery beast, but if you’ve spray-painted racing numbers on the doors, you’ve pretty well sealed your fate. And for the love of all that is good and right, do not post the video of your antics on YouTube. —MA

MARC URBANO

Event #2: Sniffs, Scratches, and Stains

Purpose: Test the as-delivered condition of each rental car, jump to conclusions about each agency.

MARC URBANO

Inside a garage at NCCAR, we inspect the vehicles. All four cars are in a decent state of roadworthiness, but in addition to a few scratches on each, all exhibit some wear and tear. The Avis Cadillac is missing a brake duct and has two badly scratched wheels. The Dollar Mustang is half a quart low on oil. The National Jeep is a half-quart overfilled and leaking at the oil filter, and one of the Enterprise Lincoln’s parking-brake cables has fused to the tailpipe. With more than 22,000 miles on the odometer, the Cadillac’s interior is rough but clean and smells like a combination of cheap cologne and Armor All. The same cannot be said for the Compass. Its rear windows look like they’ve never been cleaned. We pull out our handy black light and discover—to our horror—a splotch of indeterminate origin on the passenger seat. The light’s ultraviolet stare is merciless, but after running it over the interiors of all four cars, we discover that none of the others is so befouled. We find some wadded-up paper and a few cigarette butts under the Town Car’s seats, which might explain the faint dirty-laundry smell. This pushes it to a second-place finish behind the almost-new Mustang. Inspections complete, we continue on to the performance parts of the test.

MARC URBANO

Gold: Mustang (Dollar)

Silver: Town Car (Enterprise)

Bronze: CTS4 (Avis)

Event 3: Sumo Wrestling

Purpose: Test each car’s heart and mettle.

MARC URBANO

The idea is simple: Two cars face off nose to nose with a tire in between to minimize scratches. When the flag drops, each driver endeavors to push his opponent’s car backwards. This, by the way, technically violates the “no towing or pushing” part of the rental agreement [see receipt]. In the first duel, the Compass provides almost no resistance to the Mustang. On the other side of the tournament bracket, the CTS4’s superior traction overcomes the heavier Town Car. The Cadillac’s all-wheel drive again proves superior as it trounces the Mustang in the finals. In search of a complete hierarchy, we pit Ford against Lincoln. The Town Car’s open diff proves to be its undoing as the right-rear tire spins madly while the Mustang’s limited-slip rear helps it push forward. Subsequently, the Lincoln finds redemption by besting the sad-sack Compass.

Gold: CTS4

Silver: Mustang

Bronze: Town Car

Event #4: Burnouts

Purpose: Safety first!—Evaluate how easily each car overpowers its grip.

A fairly predictable but ultimately necessary test, burnouts are an essential phase of the mating ritual in many parts of the United States. The Cadillac lays down no rubber at all, despite Sherman wetting all four tires with water in an attempt to diminish traction. The Compass can only muster a mild chirp of the tires, resulting in one foot of rubber. Gluckman’s Lincoln takes second with a modest five feet, and the Ford walks away with a 149-foot-long patch.

View Photos MARC URBANO

Gold: Mustang

Silver: Town Car

Bronze: Compass

Event #5: Reverse Race

Purpose: Anti-terrorist and/or evasive readiness.

Inspired by a scene in the book Stand On It: Stroker Ace, where two drivers race to the airport and back in reverse, we decided to see who could lap NCCAR the fastest in “R.” Yanca is first up. The convertible has the natural benefit of unencumbered rearward vision, but the 30-degree wind whipping the driver in the face mitigates any advantage. Still, Yanca sets a commendable time of 3 minutes 5 seconds over the 2.0-mile road course at NCCAR. Sherman follows up with a full-throttle brake-torque launch and quickly slams into the governed top reverse speed of 31 mph, which stretches his lap time to a long 4 minutes 12 seconds. Next up is Gluckman, who tames the softly sprung, wobbly Lincoln to an astounding lap of 2 minutes 50 seconds, aided by the Town Car’s 63-mph reverse top speed. (Fun fact: With a reverse 0-to-60-mph time of 9.2 seconds, the Lincoln is only 1.1 seconds slower going backward than forward. Try finding that out in anything but a rental car.) Yet again, the Compass brings up the rear, mustering a 30-mph reverse top speed and interminable lap of 4 minutes 23 seconds.

Gold: Town Car

Silver: Mustang

Bronze: CTS4

Turns out that 63 mph in reverse in a Lincoln town car is utterly terrifying. MARC URBANO

Event #6: Skid-plate Donuts (Short Program)

Purpose: Our own amusement.

The Compass was selected for its basic-transportation attributes, though it proved to be slightly less than that. But with two half-inch slabs of high-density polyethylene mounted under the rear wheels (plastic food trays also work well but are far less durable) and the parking brake engaged, the front-drive Jeep can endlessly arc and spin around itself—at least until the plastic wears through. Bonus: There is no specific prohibition of this practice in the rental agreement. The three other drivers were forced to the sidelines because their vehicles’ parking brakes are at drive-wheel locations.

Gold: Compass

DNS: CTS4, Mustang, Town Car

MARC URBANO

Tarheel Test Track

We conducted our rental car olympics at the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research (NCCAR), America’s newest automotive proving grounds. This 620-acre site, carved out of woodlands where Interstate 95 meets the North Carolina–Virginia border, is a nonprofit state- and county-backed venture with ties to state universities and community colleges. NCCAR facilities that opened last summer include a 2.0-mile road course, a vehicle dynamics pad, and a well-equipped garage and office complex. Expansion plans include a 4.6-mile road course with major elevation changes; a larger, 49-acre dynamics pad; a chassis lab; and an emissions lab equipped with a four-wheel chassis dynamometer. Located less than 1000 miles from more than 50 North American assembly plants, NCCAR is ideally situated to support vehicle development. It should also come in handy for East Coast startups, innovators, suppliers, and the occasional C/D project. —Don Sherman

MARC URBANO

Event #7: Parking-Brake-Assisted Parallel Parking

Purpose: Test agility.

Of all our tests, this one has the best real-world application. Imagine yourself searching for a parking spot in a strange city. You see a space on the opposite side of the street. You obviously don’t have time for a three-point turn. You need a car that can perform a perfect 180 into your rightful spot. With a fairly large rectangle laid out and practice rounds complete, we place a watermelon on top of each orange cone used to mark our parking space in order to simulate other cars/small pedestrians. (Fun fact: Walmart Supercenters stock watermelons in December.) The results are not encouraging to anyone planning to attempt this maneuver on the street. Running first in the Compass, your narrator overshoots the parking space twice, punting a watermelon with the right-rear door panel each time, before nosing in at a 45-degree angle with the rear wheels 11 feet from the curb on the third try. In a change of pace, Yanca opts to take out the fruit at the front of the parking space on his first two attempts, splattering red flesh all over the Mustang’s hood before a clean final run that stops 10 feet from the curb. Sherman hits two watermelons on his first attempt, one on his second, and nails the third try only three feet from the curb. “Read it and weep,” declares the apparent winner. He knows as well as the rest of the group that the Town Car is hopeless; Gluckman’s triple-fault effort leaves us with precious few watermelons to spare.

Gold: CTS4

Silver: Mustang

Bronze: Compass

MARC URBANO

Event #8: Many Happy Returns

Purpose: Discover the true meaning of customer service.

Having exhaustively tested all four participating vehicles for service, performance, and overall lack-of-hooptiness, we return our quartet of cars. The process is simple. All four agencies take back their cars with minimal fuss. Rental agencies seem to assume that customers use these cars in a normal fashion. Or perhaps the check-in agents just don’t care. Once again, Enterprise impressed when the same agent who rented Gluckman his white whale also took care of the return, even going so far as to explain the details of the bill.

Gold: Enterprise

Silver: Dollar

Bronze (tie): Avis, National

So what did we learn? Plenty. You don’t have to rent a car that feels like a rental. You can get a cool, modern car like the Mustang or CTS with relative ease. Just be sure to rent on the right day; the full lots we saw on a Monday night were nearly empty when we returned two days later. The Town Car is perhaps the best car in the world at going backward. The outgoing Compass is just as mediocre as we remembered. And we learned that even if you can get watermelon in the winter, you probably don’t want to eat it. Trust us on that one.

MARC URBANO

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