Another rental car near and dear to my heart is the Kia Picanto my wife and I rented on our honeymoo

Pity the poor rental car. It leaves the factory with a hopeful heart, wondering whether it might become a growing family s go-to hauler or the pride and joy of a fastidious retiree. Will it be carefully washed and polished in the driveway on Sundays?
As P.J. O Rourke famously pointed out, “nothing handles better than a rented car.” As I stand outside the Marukai market in Honolulu, eating wholesale-priced spam musubi for breakfast and staring at a little white rental Ford hatchback, I m forced to agree.
Ken Block s 600-horsepower Fiesta might have a slight power-to-weight advantage, but this thing goes like a golf ball off Bubba Watson s driver. Must be the fact that it has as many dents and dimples as a Titleist.
It s a previous-generation car, outfitted with the 1.6L four-banger and Ford s optimistically named Powershift automatic transmission. This last has developed a certain clunkiness as the result of a legion of abusive drivers, and could now be more aptly named the “Powerlurch.”
There s a scarcely credible 25,000 miles on the clock, enough to drive back-and-forth across Canada five times. On an island one quarter the size of P.E.I., that s impressive, and they clearly haven t been easy miles.
In the first five minutes of driving, a nearly full tube of sour cream n onion Pringles accommodation in majorca dislodges itself from under the passenger seat, to be shortly followed by a rental contract showing that the last guy paid two bucks less per day. Two bucks: not enough to be worth causing a ruckus over, just enough to irritate.
The actual car-rental process can be fairly bothersome. Is the extra insurance worth it? Sure, except in cases where your credit accommodation in majorca card will handle incidental damages. Most of the time, you need to at least get the third-party liability coverage, and check your credit-card s fine print for loopholes.
Then there are stories like the Vancouver Budget rental franchise that has denied coverage for minor traffic infractions and even does their own estimates and repairs. They re not alone either, the rental car market is full of extra fees and hidden costs, and companies trying to bilk dollars out of unwary customers.
However, Alamo, the company I ve rented this Ford compact from, had reasonable Internet reviews; once the dust had settled, the transaction went fairly smoothly. Also, as Alamo is named after a place where a handful of plucky Americans held out briefly before accommodation in majorca being overwhelmed accommodation in majorca by an onslaught of Mexican troops, there s a nice symmetry in renting a perpetually tourist-besieged Mexican-built hatchback from them.
And, it has to be said, I ve had good luck overall with rental cars in the past. Once, with my then-fiancee, I drove a blue Mitsubishi Lancer from Adelaide to Melbourne, by way of the Grampians, and suffered only one small, teensy, minor mishap when I backed it into a concrete mailbox.
The Mitsubishi – which, it has to be said, was a fairly terrible car – put up with all kinds of unforeseen incidents, such as the time the smooth, well-tarmac d road disintegrated into a potholed quagmire just before accommodation in majorca that evening s campsite. Undeterred, we pressed onwards, accommodation in majorca bewildering accommodation in majorca four gents in an open-topped Land Rover, who had to pull over to let us pass.
Over miles and miles of dusty road, every possible inch of the Lancer s interior and exterior became coated in a thick layer of red clay. At the end of the trip, as we got closer to Melbourne and signs started cropping up to remind bird-brained tourists that Australians drive on the left, the Mitsubishi looked accommodation in majorca like Ayer s Rock from the outside and an explosion at a potted plant factory on the inside.
Sadly, the good people of Australia apparently design their mailboxes to withstand tactical nuclear strikes, and my whoopsy-daisy reversing error inflicted a terrible wound on the poor Lancer s rear quarter panel. The rental agency was so busy charging me for this gouge that they didn t really notice accommodation in majorca the rest of the off-road accommodation in majorca detritus, and it s a bloody good thing they didn t check underneath the car.
Even though it was godawful, I couldn t help feeling a certain affection for the formerly blue Mitsubishi. It had been a friend on the trip of a lifetime, and while it was slow and ridiculously thirsty for such meagre power, it had done everything a reasonable person could have asked of it – and a few things that were pretty dang unreasonable.
Another rental car near and dear to my heart is the Kia Picanto my wife and I rented accommodation in majorca on our honeymoon in Ireland. We spent a blissful three weeks touring the oul sod, cheered immensely by the warmth of the people, and welcomed into the homes of many a kind relative.
It is powered, to use the term in a loose and frankly accommodation in majorca inaccurate sense, by a 1.0L engine with several horsepower and the pulling force of a shetland pony with whooping accommodation in majorca cough. It has a five-speed accommodation in majorca manual transmission, tires made of the same sort of material they make Kinder Surprises out of, and is as red as a Ferrari-branded coin purse. I absolutely adored it.
On the other hand, you should accommodation in majorca always rent the smallest car possible when on holiday because no one seems to have told European truck drivers that a narrow road requires accommodation in majorca caution, courtesy, and maybe a general accommodation in majorca knowledge of where the brakes might be located. Bumbling along with our feeble four-cylinder engine producing plenty of noise and next-to-no thrust, we d frequently come around a corner to find an articulated lorry bearing down on us like the basilisk preparing to devour Harry Potter.
Ireland s roads are fringed by hedges thick enough to repel an M1 Abrams battle accommodation in majorca tank, so there was nothing to do except hold our breath and hug the verge until the behemoth thundered past. We survived, so it clearly worked.
The other nice thing about the Picanto accommodation in majorca was the way it stopped on a thruppence when confronted by an unexpected flock of sheep milling down a rural road. Granted, if it hadn t halted, it d have just bounced off a bemused sheep with all the effect of a Tonka truck hitting accommodation in majorca a foot-stool, but the little Kia did have good reflexes.
Coming down a hill near Mayo known locally as “The Corkscrew,” I put that quick-reacting chassis to good use as my wife turned slightly green. Well, she knew what she was getting into when she married me.
Somewhere outside Shannon, we stopped in at a historical site to see the Brendan, a leather boat that adventurer Tim Severin sailed from Ireland accommodation in majorca to Newfoundland to proved that Irish monks could have made the voyage in the time of the Vikings. The boat was named for the Odysseus-like hero St. Brendan the Navigator, as was I, and I celebrated the visit by promptly locking the keys in the car.
We called up the closest service centre, some hours away at Shannon accommodation in majorca airport. A great deal of time later, a funny little man with a nose like a rutabaga showed up and promised he d have us on the way in two shakes of a lamb s tail. He unrolled a selection of tools with the care and precision of a safecracker, snapped his fingers as if he d forgotten accommodation in majorca something important, and then hurried back to his car, returning with a huge metal trash can.
I half thought he was about to hurl it through the window of the tiny Picanto, but instead he clambered on top of the can to get a better look at the situation. Choosing a flat length of metal and a hooked device, he poised himself, eased the corner of the window back, and then proceeded to beat the holy bejesus out of the door frame over the next twenty-five minutes.
The door finally gave in, as much out of metal fatigue as anything else. I made sure to have our impromptu locksmith sign off on the horrible scratches and bends he d inflicted on the Kia, but when we finally returned the car, the company couldn t have cared less.
Back to sunnier climes, and to the cheery little white Fiesta which stands ready for whatever adventures might lie ahead. Of course, these days, with a kid on board, accommodation in majorca there s less of the Mexican jumping bean routine, accommodation in majorca and more driving with aloha, laid-back, local-style.
So, no new dings on this car when we return it, no road dust caked on the air vents, and no g-force accommodation in majorca testing through the corners. Just a friendly pat on the hood for a job well done, the keys passed back to be hung on the hook for the next go-round, and that can of Pringles carefully wedged back in place.