Would you buy a low mileage rental car ?

Maintenance can't make up for the fact that a car has been beat on.
Nobody seems to be talking about the Beat On Factor. You know....the factor that makes the transmission go out way before it's time. In spite of the " Great Maintenance "
It's the way people drive and have driven these cars that is the unknown here. It's the great unknown and therefor a big roll of the dice.
If some people are the type that are convinced that cars are made so well and can take the abuse....fine. I'm not.

 

Reminds me of a buddy of mine while stationed over in Germany back in 1977. He asked me if he should change oil on his AMC Gremlin (bought new when he arrived in country) before shipping it home. I asked him when the last time he changed oil was and he told me he never had, he just added oil when it was low.

He had been driving the car for 3 years...

It was a one owner car, not that means a darn thing...

 

KD,
I think that the fact that the car has had 50 different drivers make it's chances of being beat on greater than a one owner car. I'm kinda talking about degrees of risk. Now whether or not that's real or just something I perceive ?

 

Kenny

I think you are perceiving this to be a bigger problem than it really is. Typical renters only drive the cars a few hundred miles and don't have them long enough to do any real serious damage.

Many are like my wife - a business person traveling on business and driving from the airport to their hotel and then to and from whatever job site they are working at.

The cars I might worry about are higher performance rental cars. Some yokel, that normally drives a Honda Civic, rents a Ford Mustang V8 and tries to play boy racer from stop light to stop light (or to the drag strip) with his 3 day rental.

 

Stop making sense or you are banned.

 

So when it comes to a rental....Mustang,,,,Camaro,,,,Challenger you would agree with my theory, but a Toyota Camry gets a " Good to go, it's been well maintained" pass ? So I might not be completely paranoid?
Let's say then that Rental Cars are the buy of the Century except don't buy a performance rental car

 

What constitutes "beating" on a car these days? Lots of full throttle? New cars don't really care. They don't wash down the cylinder walls like old carbureted over rich cars could. Hard cornering? Replace the tires. Too much hard braking? Replace the pads, or worst case, the rotors. Newer cars are amazing things and last a long time with a little maintenance. My 2 cents.

 

Since you are saving $10k, spend $2k on a 100k mile warranty and all those potential drivetrain issues are covered. You can buy the extended manufacturers warrranty any time before the factory warranty expires. If you have have issues along the way, buy the warranty, if you feel comfortable with the car skip it.

Low risk proposition to buy the rental car if you are willing to buy some additional piece of mind.