Quote:
Originally Posted by BarryRX
When I was younger and had to travel a lot for business, I landed at the airport, rented a car, and started to drive to my destination. I got caught in a huge downpour that came on very quickly. I had trouble finding the windshield wipers and for a few scary moments couldn't see very well. Now, when I get in a rental, I make sure I know where the horn is, the lights, the windshield wipers, the emergency flashers, and which side the gas tank is on.
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This is excellent advice. I have had all sorts of problems with rental cars. In Las Vegas in the eighties I rented from Hertz a Lincoln Town Car upon arrival late in the evening. It's dashboard display was an early digital, all lights. After I drove it a few miles at around midnight the entire display went out. I did not know how fast I was going, the temperature of the cooling system or how much gas it had, nada. Fortunately I was able to return it as I had to do some cross country driving the next day.
A couple of years ago I rented a car from Enterprise at MCO for a month's stay in The Villages. It was a Nissan having a keyless ignition. If the key is pretty much anywhere in the car one pushes the same button to start and stop the engine. One day I was driving outside TV and stopped at a restaurant to eat. The engine would not turn off, even after I removed the key from inside the car. I ended up driving the car to Enterprise in TV. No one THERE could figure out how to turn it off! Fortunately they had another rental available which they gave to me. I hung around long enough to see the car loaded onto a tow truck, engine still running, to be taken somewhere.