Hertz Rent2Buy Review - Part 1

So in my previous entry, I talked about why I was interested in a rental car.  A big piece of it is price.  Rental agencies need to dispose of their older vehicles and they have a few ways to do that.  They can dump them into the auction market.  They can sell them on their own lots.  Or they can sell them right out of their fleets of rental vehicles.  Hertz has decided to try the last one.

Here's how it is supposed to work.  You go to http://www.hertzrent2buy.com.  You tell them your zip code, and they will find cars you might be interested in.  The selection of their rental cars are quite comparable to most used cars on the market.  Tell them you want to look at minivans, and all their rental minivans that are up for sale appear, within a default 100 mile radius.  Living in southern New England yields lots of places where those cars are for sale.  Anyway, you pick one you are interested in and you are given options for checking the vehicle out.  You can take a complimentary 2 hour test drive, or you have the option of renting the car for 3 days at $49.95 per day (a "special" rate).    If at the end of the test drive, you don't want to buy the car, just return it to where you rented it, and pay the rental fee.  This is definitely a new and interesting way to buy used cars.

If you decide you want to buy it, you click a button on the website, and the buying process starts.  In the meantime, you keep the car, and the rental fees are waived.

I LOVED the sound of this and really wanted to try it out.  But before I get into that, some caveats:

• The price of the car is non-negotiable.  You can get a discount by applying a promo code.  Search the web... I found one on their twitter site for $200 off the purchase of the car.
• UPDATE: Here is a promo code for $100 off:   R2B-CSU
• The cars offered are generally the base model.
• The selection of models is limited to what Hertz bought 1-2 years ago... so not every model in a class is offered.
• Reserving the car can be troublesome (at least it was for me) and more on that later.

As you know, I was looking at minivans.  Hertz had several models to choose from.  They had the Mazda5, the Kia Sedona, the Toyota Sienna, and the Volkswagen Routan.  What the heck was a Routan, I wondered.

The Sienna's were pricey.  They were over $20k and were the base model usually.  I want to stay married so I scratched the Sedona off the list.  And the Mazda5, while very inexpensive and highly rated, had no towing capacity.  So what about this Routan?

Well, it's essentially a Chrysler Town & Country.  VW wanted to enter the minvan market, as their research has shown that while they do well in the young single and married couples, they get choked out of the market when those young families have kids.  The euro van they produce was too expensive for the US market.  And Chrysler was shutting down the Pacifica production line in Canada after ending that model.  So VW made a deal to have Chrysler make a rebadged T&C for them.

VW did tweak the car.  They reworked the suspension, and some of the sheet metal.  They put their own seats in the 2nd row - non Stow 'n Go - so they don't fold into the floor, but are VERY comfy.  Overall, it does look significantly different from a T&C, but I can't speak to the ride.  Compared to the new Odyssey I drove, it feels bigger and more like a boat - you know, like a minivan.

Hertz did have two different options to consider.  The 2009 models were the SE trim, while the 2010 models were the S trim.  And their SE models also had two option packages of great importance to me.  One provides steering wheel audio controls (but they hide on the back of the steering wheel), and more importantly, they all came with the Tow Package - thus preparing the van for a 3500 pound towing payload.  PAYDIRT!  And the price?  Well the one I ended up renting was $16,600 after the $200 discount, and it had 39,000 miles.  That price is SWEET.  Edmunds shows the trade in value north of $17,000 and even the radically dealer biased Kelley Blue Book put the trade in at $15,800 at "fair" condition.  So I can buy this van from Hertz for what others might expect trading it in to a dealer!

So I decided to try and rent on of these.  And this is where all the "fun" started.   More on that in the next post...

TTFN