Worn interior, slippery silicone on the dashboard, kerbed alloys and a suspicious tapping from under the bonnet. You my friend have chosen your hire car well. Not for you the upgraded “premium” Volkswagen which still smells of new car. You chose wisely, cheapest hire car company and a sales desk based out of a caravan, perfect.
Apparently it is possible to hire a decent car but I have never managed it and nor do I want to. I love booking and being shown a picture of a smart little Ford Fiesta. When I arrive it’s a Kia Picanto with 150ks on the clock but am I disappointed? Frankly, the worse the car, the better. It means I can drive it unworried about parking scrapes, door dings or probably even major structural damage.
I bounce between the upgrading the insurance and not bothering. I once paid the full excess on a Peugeot 308 after some spirited rally driving in Gran-Canaria. My confidence was high, my talent was low and the end result was predictable. Getting the car back to the main road from the forest track was the first hurdle. A task I skilfully accomplished at the cost of some wheel rims. Because the contract stipulated I wasn’t to drive the car off road I was slightly worried by this point. I spent 10 minutes rolling a huge boulder and placing it just off the main road, smashing it with another rock to simulate me supposedly hitting it. My girlfriend watched this in silence before quietly informing me between tears of laughter that I had smashed up an enormous boulder on the left side of the road. Shame really that they drive on the right but by this time the recovery truck had arrived. They swapped my broken 308 for another terrible Peugeot and I was on my way.
Over the years, that’s the only one I have damaged but I have been fortunate to drive some awful cars in beautiful places. It’s nice to be reminded that I like driving and sometimes, the car isn’t important, it’s the place you’re in.
The Driven Wheel 