Rental Car Roulette

I'm currently driving around in a 2017 Nissan Altima. I just had a look at Nissan's website and it tells me the gearbox, which I thought was an automatic, is actually a CVT. That explains a lot...
I'll write up a more detailed review for the other thread once I'm home again.

Interested because I've had 2016's that cruise nicely at roughly 170kph.
 
I'm currently driving around in a 2017 Nissan Altima. I just had a look at Nissan's website and it tells me the gearbox, which I thought was an automatic, is actually a CVT. That explains a lot...
I'll write up a more detailed review for the other thread once I'm home again.

Looking forward for that review. I drove the Altima (base 4cyl model) for 15 days last year in late summer on my holidays for 5k kilometers and got a pretty precise picture of it. I'll share my review as soon as yours is finished as I do not want to interfere with your opinion on it.
 
Booking a car for a trip to New York, can someome explain the difference between Full-Size and Standard? I fucking hate rental car classes.

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And yes, I know a car in NYC is just dumb, but I have certain things I need to do that I can't on bus or train, and the amount of Ubering I'd need to do would be significantly more than $162, even taking parking and gas into account.

EDIT: Eehhhhhh nevermind. Reserved a mid-size for a little cheaper instead. Could've gone even cheaper with a compact, but after last time, I'm avoiding anything smaller than mid-size. Taking bets on what I will get.
 
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Cruze or Nissan Sentra. Good choice as I had an Altima last time I was in NYC and it wasn't great.
 
I rented a car from sixt for the Ringmeet, and requested audi A6 3L tdi or similar.

starting day i appeared 2 hours too early for the rental and they didn't have the car or anything similar there.
So they offered me 2 choises (i assumed the first being wait the 2h), a vw Touareg or bmw 520d, so i immediately (for the lulz) took the Touareg :p since it was free upgrade.

it had 1220km, 262hp 3L v6 tdi, off-road package, air-suspension and winter tires :lol:
over the weekend i had it mostly in special off-road -mode with comfort shocks :lol: and it only drinked in the 725km drive 75L fuel (indicated 10l/100km).
vmx indicated on the deristricted autobahn was 235km/h (factory vmax is 225km/h), and tires were only upto 240km/h.




i sorta want one now :blink:
 
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I rented a 7-passenger SUV to go to Oregon to see the total eclipse, and I got a 2017 Dodge Journey Crossroad.
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we covered it with a rainfly to give us privacy at night.

It was nice inside. The leather steering wheel is very comfortable. The UConnect infotainment system is good. There are a ton of cubby holes to put things: one on each side the rear seat passenger footwell, one under the floor at the back of the suv, and if you lift up the bottom of the front passenger seat, there was one there. My wife, corgi, and myself camped in the back overnight to see the eclipse. It was roomy enough that I slept through the night. My wife is 8 months pregnant, so she didn't sleep through the night, but no amount of comfort lets her sleep through the night these days. The dog was happy.

The only real let down of the whole thing is the engine and transmission. The engine has 280 hp, but its all up high, so hardly any low end torque. We went up a few steep mountain passes on the freeways in Oregon and Northern California. You couldn't just give it a little gas to slowly get up a hill. It had to downshift and sound like you had just floored it. If you gave it a little throttle, nothing happened at all. It was annoying. Also the controls for cruise control aren't responsive when you use them to speed up or speed down. And we had the top range V6 model. How bad would the 180 hp 4-cylinder engine be?

I liked it as a rental. I couldn't imagine buying one with my own money.
 
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I don't really get the point of that car. Just buy a Grand Cherokee or a minivan. On the plus side, it does good burnouts.
 
I don't really get the point of that car. Just buy a Grand Cherokee or a minivan. On the plus side, it does good burnouts.

Rick loves the Journey. Nobody else does and basically at this point it mostly sells to fleets.
 
I don't really get the point of that car. Just buy a Grand Cherokee or a minivan. On the plus side, it does good burnouts.

It was initially designed to replace the short wheelbase Caravan when they condensed to LWB models only in 2008.


Rick loves the Journey. Nobody else does and basically at this point it mostly sells to fleets.


I thought it was a novel solution to a genuine problem (what to do with a set of buyers you don't want to abandon yet you want to rationalize your lineup a bit) but I wouldn't say I loved it.
 
I don't really get the point of that car. Just buy a Grand Cherokee or a minivan. On the plus side, it does good burnouts.

I had this exact thought. On the way back from Oregon, I was around a lot of Grand Cherokees, and I thought "this looks exactly like that". Once I stopped and saw them next to each other I saw how they weren't alike. Jeep being actual 4wd as opposed to the soft awd of the Journey. I don't think the GC is 7 passenger though, but I know it tows 7k vs the 2500 that the Journey can tow. GC all the way.
 
I had this exact thought. On the way back from Oregon, I was around a lot of Grand Cherokees, and I thought "this looks exactly like that". Once I stopped and saw them next to each other I saw how they weren't alike. Jeep being actual 4wd as opposed to the soft awd of the Journey. I don't think the GC is 7 passenger though, but I know it tows 7k vs the 2500 that the Journey can tow. GC all the way.

The GC is significantly more expensive, seats 5, and is aimed at different, more affluent, buyers.
 
Load the journey up and I'm sure it won't be as safe on the road as the GC.
 
So, I've got a Patriot.








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At first I was shocked just how agricultural it feels. Given the relatively modern looks, I was kind of expecting it to drive like a somewhat modern car. Instead it feels just like any other Russian off-road car - huge steering wheel play, incredibly imprecise transmission that makes even a Renault feel silk smooth, it was basically impossible to shift from 2nd to 3rd in one movement, and the ride quality on the road is quite apalling too. It's also got the typical Russian car smell, the fuel gauge won't show a full tank, even if you fill it up to the point that petrol is spraying all over the place, the speedo was showing 10 km/h even when stationary, and the tailgate would open like 1 in 10 times. Then again, it goes just about anywhere you point the steering wheel to, it goes over huge potholes like they are just some small bumps, the ground clearance is excellent, maybe just in some particularly slippery conditions it could benefit from diff locks. You also get a fairly modern looking dashboard, electric windows and mirrors, touchscreen radio, heated seats, parking sensors and many of those things even work most of the time. Also it's huge, the dashboard is higher up than regular cars' roofs, and even the big SUVs like the Range Rovers and Landcruiser 200s were a bit smaller. Considering it sells for a fraction of the price of a similarly sized, similarly off-road capable cars, it's hard to be too critical really. It's quite ironic though that the Russians are perfectly capable of building a car that can go where almost no other cars can, yet they struggle with some of the most basic things that work perfectly fine in any other car, like the locks. Or the fuel gauge.

Going back to my Focus was perhaps even more shocking than getting into this car, it just feels like a razor-sharp supercar.
 
I thought you had the Jeep Patriot.

I was going to ask, if you hate it now, try and spend almost your entire working days in one. :)
 
Reserved a compact car with National in NYC. They let me choose anything in the Emerald Club section. The options were 2 Sentras, a Malibu, a Veras, an Impala and this (my choice)

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How does it compare to a Patriot?
 
How does it compare to a Patriot?

Setting a pretty low bar, eh? Its not hard to be better than a Patriot. While it was by no means a great vehicle, it was pretty decent. Just pretend it doesn't say Jeep on it. Certainly was better than any Sentra or Versa I've ever driven.
 
My old boss wanted to switch to those after the Patriot went out of production. Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I just think that by now, VW's are reliable enough to last 4 years or 120-130,000 miles and we'd go back to them.
 
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