What's the worst rental car you've had?

[me73]

Over the past 3 weeks I've had two rental cars that were absolute, and surprising opposites.

The first one was an AWD Camry Hybrid that absolutely surprised me. The drivetrain was resaonably peppy and behaved nicely. The quality of the interior and controls were great and it got 50 mpg over the week I had it. While the car wasn't fun to drive, it was really nice and I could see it being a car that a car person would recommend to a non-car person a lot.

In absolute contrast was the base model Corolla that I had next. It had a freighteningly anemic engine that made a lot of unpleasant noises as it tried to catch up with traffic. To say it was anemic would be an understatement. The handling was horrible, the car leaned and flopped around like a boat around any kind of corner and it did so with absolutely no feel through the wheel or chassis. It was a terrible experience. I don't know how Toyota could sell two cars that are so starkly different to drive. If you are looking to buy a Corolla, look at the Hybrid!

So the 2025 Corolla sits among the top 3 cars on my list for the worst rental cars I've had. It's up there with a 201X's Jeep Wrangler which I'm sure is good off road, but it's just a miserable, loud, mess on the road and a 90's Geo Metro which was the scariest thing I've ever driven at 90mph trying to keep up with traffic in Chicago. I was sure things were going to start flying off of it.

 

[SJM]

Picked up my Hertz rental in London recently and had booked Skoda Octavia, ended up with a Yaris Cross Hybrid (they said it was an upgrade).
Apart from the basic, poverty pack, scratchy plastic interior the car smelled of vomit(we had windows down till the motorway, once up the smell was overpowering).
Drove to Oxford where we ended up with a BYD Seal HEV. Wow what an upgrade, plush interior, pretty good power, exceptional fuel economy (1000km) and quiet.
We've had some ordinary hire cars but the Yaris wins hands down as the worst.

 

[Beachbum]

Worst was my very first fly-drive in the Florida a Nissan Sentra. Was a horrible car, the worst aspect being the Seat belt shoulder belt that was permanently engaged and slide around the door frame to the A piillar, when you opened the door and then to the B pillar when you closed the door. If you forgot, the thing nearly garrotted you

 

[ADC]

Not sure if it was objectively the worst car, but certainly the most disappointing / worst substitution I ever got was several years ago in the US.

Was away for work in Boston for a couple of weeks that happened to span the Labor Day holiday weekend, and a colleague and I got invited up to Maine to hang out with the Big Boss for the weekend, go on his boat, eat lobster rolls, etc. We thought we'd go big on making it a proper US holiday-weekend road trip, and booked a big ol' F150 (my first vote was for a Mustang, but they were all taken). Yeehaw. We pitch up to the car rental place early Saturday morning, and I clock that there doesn't seem to be any large pickup trucks out the front ... we go inside, and are handed to keys to a Ford EcoSport. Really not the vibe we were going for. We are not amused.

Turned the driving part of the trip from "America! F*ck Yeah!" to simply covering the miles, and was particularly painful when it started storming torrentially coming back into Boston on the Monday evening, I'm driving "spray blind" in bumper-to-bumper-yet-doing-65 traffic (consisting massive vehicles that I cannot even see up into), the car is pitching around like crazy and nearly submerging into large bodies of standing water.

 

[BLUEMIRA]

2020 Nissa. Qashqai.
Rented a car for a trip to Vancouver Island. Gorgeous coastal roads and mountain passes from Victoria to Tofino but unfortunately I got this gutless, top heavy blob of a car.....I mean SUV (no offense to anyone that has one). At least storage was good, lol.
By comparison, on a vacation in Spain I rented a car and got a red Alpha Romeo Stelvio SUV. Totally different experience. It wasn't the top trim but it was dynamic on the coastal highways of the Mediterranean coast.

 

[VL3X]

I had a pretty crappy Nissan Micra in Ireland for a week. It got the job done, but one of the tires had a slow leak and it was annoying to fill up often on our vacation. The other crappy car we had was a poverty spec Elantra last time I went out to Sedona. I booked a small SUV and they gave me an Elantra. I beat the piss outta that thing racing through the desert to make our timed entrance appointment at Antelope Canyon. Pretty sure I got it on 2 wheels ripping through the sandy gravel roads leading to the parking lot.

 

[me73]

Worst was my very first fly-drive in the Florida a Nissan Sentra. Was a horrible car, the worst aspect being the Seat belt shoulder belt that was permanently engaged and slide around the door frame to the A piillar, when you opened the door and then to the B pillar when you closed the door. If you forgot, the thing nearly garrotted you

My Integra GS-R had the mouse belt. The day I bought it I pulled the fuse that drove that ridiculous thing and just manually latched it over my shoulder while doing the lap belt. It become as much of a habit as a normal belt that I never thought about it.