I will be spending two weeks in rural Cornwall and I need to rent a car. In the US it is generally much cheaper to rent a car away from the airport. Is it similar in the UK? Could I save money if I took a train from Heathrow to a city and rent a car from there? What advice to Dopers have?
Ehh, the straight up cost of rental is similar in most locations here, especially if you book in advance.
Trains however are very expensive here, I just did a quick check, and the cost of a train return from Heathrow to Plymouth is roughly the same price as one week’s car rental, about £160, and that’s only for ‘off peak’ trains.
Having said that, fuel is also very expensive (and don’t fill up at motorway services if you can help it, they’re substantially higher price than other gas stations), and the drive out of Heathrow can be a nightmare if you’re trying to drive down the M25 at rush hour. If you haven’t driven in England before, it all takes a lot longer than you expect, especially once you start going into rural roads; Cornish back roads can be a nightmare.
If you’re trying to save money the cheapest option would probably be coach from the airport to Plymouth or Truro (depending on which end of Cornwall you’re staying at, or Bodmin has a car rental place as well, which is right next to the coach drop off point), and renting a car there. Not because the car hire itself would be cheaper, but because it’d cost about £80-100 in fuel to drive both ways from Heathrow.
That coach company is pretty reliable, goes straight from the airport, and coaches here don’t have the ‘full o’ crazies’ reputation of Greyhound in the states, but a ticket can be under £15 each way if you book in advance, which is a bit cheaper’n £160 train or £80 fuel.
I recently moved to Cornwall, feel free to hit me up for more specific advice via PM if you want!
If you are driving from Heathrow to Cornwall I’d bite the bullet and get the car at Heathrow. You should be able to get 2 weeks from a major company for £200-250 as long as you don’t need anything exotic (and smaller cars are better on rural Cornwall roads)
Certainly hiring the car away from the airport is no cheaper. A quick look at hiring from Heathrow vs Newquay town centre on the same dates shows that Heathrow has more choice and potentially cheaper.
Driving out of Heathrow can be a pain but less hassle than either train/bus and then car hire at the other end (especially if you are going to have to repeat that in reverse at the end of the holiday)
The M25 is clearly signposted from everywhere in that area. Once you get on it you are going to hit either the M3 or M4 and you take either of those heading west (M3 is better) and once you do that it is plain sailing. You are only going to go wrong in one major way which is if you end up going round the M25 the wrong way and miss both motorways but even then, you just get off at the next junction and back on in the opposite direction and you are 10 minutes worse off.
And driving in the UK, for all that it can be fast, crowded and with narrow roads, the actual standard and discipline is really very good (even on those single-track Cornish back-roads).
When I went driving around Cornwall a few years ago, I took the train to Penzance (the coach would probably be cheaper, but take longer). I rented a car there. I used Enterprise, so I could check prices and make the reservation online ahead of time.
Get the smallest car you can drive, not only for price but because there are a lot of narrow hedgerowed lanes and you want something that can squeeze past vehicles coming the other way without getting scraped.
I also recommend that you “rehearse” the places you intend to drive to on Google Streetview, to get a better sense of what the roads and area around them really look like, including landmarks. I always find that helpful before I drive around the UK countryside.
There’s not as much difference in time as you’d expect, actually; the train is faster, but you have to change at least once, whereas the coach is direct. To Penzance, (at the tip of Cornwall) it’s about 6hr 20min by train, 7hr 30min via coach, but that assumes changing trains twice for the fastest route (and there is no direct route), whereas you can just fall asleep on the coach and not worry 
To Plymouth, at the Eastern edge of the county, it’s even closer; 4hr 30min by coach, 3hr 53min by train, again changing twice on the train but not on the coach.
The only real advantage of renting at Heathrow is that their car rental places are open far later than the city ones, so if you did get coach/train then pick up the car, you’d maybe not be able to collect it 'til the following morning if you get in late. Some of the smaller ones rental places are also closed Sundays.
The flip side of that, of course, is that if you get in late from a long flight, do you really want to immediately hop in a car for a 5 hour drive?
Just another bit of info as this is something I’ve researched previously for my own holidays. The coach tickets are rarely available for the lowest price and the best I could find, off peak and out of season, were £60 per person return to Truro and an 7-8 hour journey time. The train was an hour faster but three times the price and you still have the issue of picking up rental car at the other end. With long journey times you have the real risk that they aren’t open. (many are only open until 5:30 or 6:00).
About twenty years ago, I rented a car from Heathrow and traveled to Bristol to visit the home office. I don’t know how to drive a manual transmission so I had to request an auto. At the time, I think manual transmissions were more common in the UK, so if that’s an issue for you, the airport location is more likely to have auto transmissions.
And in a narrow lane in Bristol, I clipped the wing mirror (side-view mirror) on a light pole. Fortunately, though, the car rental agency only charged about fifteen pounds penalty for that.
Regardless of what you decide to do, book it in advance, ideally several weeks in advance.
Everything in England regarding transport except local busses and train journeys of just a few stops is far more expensive if you just show up.
Did something similar a few years back. We flew into Heathrow, spent a couple of nights in London, then took the train to Plymouth and rented a car from Avis there. Main reason I didn’t rent in London was that I had never driven on the left before (let alone had to figure out compound roundabouts) and didn’t want to be practicing in a major city. I thought learning in Cornwall would be calmer and easier. I was wrong - all the roads are slightly over one lane wide, two-way traffic, and the locals drive 60+ all the time. I felt like I was in a non-stop game of chicken.
One thing I did discover is that if you rent from Avis it was far cheaper to book through Avis USA than through Avis UK, although that might have been because we picked the car up in Plymouth but returned in in Edinburgh.
One of these places. 
Nice, cheap national option: https://carclub.easycar.com/
Train tickets are often much cheaper when booked in advance. And I think that the OP may not want to be driving immediately after a long flight. And the views of the countryside are often nicer from the train than from the road.
Just to put it out there, the Night Riviera overnight train still runs from London to Penzance. If it’s anything like the Caledonian Sleeper go for a berth, not a sleeper seat, so the OP could spend some time in London.
Booked many long distance lately? I know that used to be the case, but the discounts seem to have vastly reduced; I just checked dates on that route 4 months ahead, and they’re the same price as tickets for tomorrow.
I need to go up North a few times a year for a meeting, I always went by train and booked way in advance, but the last year or so there’s been little or no discount available, except the regular one for booking in advance rather than on the day.
I’m actually trying to research a trip of my own going virtually the same trip, but in reverse, for a holiday this summer, so I’m pretty up on the prices right now
I’ve been in similar situations before and driving after a long flight can be an issue (although when coming in to the UK from the States they have always been overnight flights) and one option is to get a cheap hotel at Heathrow for that first night and get a car the next day. Travelodgesare perfectly fine and you can get them for £40. You could even get the car as soon as you arrive, drive an hour or so west and grab a hotel along the route which would leave you fresh the next day with the possibility of stopping and seeing some sites on the way (Stonehenge is directly on that route)
I can see the attraction of letting the train do the work but you do end up being under someone else’s control and either rushing or waiting to make connections and car hire opening times plus, if you have more than one person, it is much more expensive than the car+cheap hotel. My advice is probably coloured by the fact that I like the freedom of driving at my own pace.
Of course if money is less of an issue and trains are your thing and the times work for your flight then the sleeper service is definitely an attractive option (and not actually much more than the normal train service) and I think that’d be my second choice. (with busses far down the list…I bloody hate busses)
Yes, actually: the Caledonian Sleeper.
Ah, different railway company.
Good info given by all, I’d just add one point of information - Heathrow to Penzance (or indeed any station between there and Plymouth) can be done with one change: get a train from Heathrow to London Paddington, then it’s direct from there. I think someone earlier suggested a minimum of two changes was required.
If it were me, I’d probably get the coach from Heathrow to the nearest Cornish town with a car rental place, and rent from there, just to avoid a long drive immediately after a long flight, but at lower cost than the train. This is particularly true in the summer, when you would be very lucky indeed to drive from Heathrow to Cornwall without hitting at least one major traffic jam (obviously quite dependent on time of day).
ETA: sorry, ignore my first paragraph - I see Filbert actually (and correctly) said you have to change at least once, twice for the fastest route (my route suggested above is probably not the fastest as the first 30 minutes of it is spent going in the wrong direction). I stand by the rest of my post though.
But of course a bus is just as susceptible to traffic jams as a car!
Thanks for the advice, all! I really appreciate it. Looks like train is out, but coach might be in. We’re spending the first week in London, so maybe a coach direct from London to, say, Yeovil. (We’re staying just west of Yeovil).
Ah! you left some rather important details out of your original post! That changes the calculation somewhat.
For your situation I would definitely suggest the train. A one-way journey from Paddington to Yeovil is about £20 each and takes about 2hr 15min. You can then rent your car at Yeovil. It’ll be more comfortable, quicker and probably about the same price as the bus. (and though I don’t know that particular line it has the potential to take you through some nice countryside)
Of course - but on a coach you can sleep/eat/read/relax rather more easily than if you are in charge of a vehicle. I was thinking of stress rather than how long the journey takes.
Agreed. Having a car in London is way more hassle than it is worth, the tube and buses are far easier.
Yeovil is nowhere near Cornwall in British terms :). When you say “just west of Yeovil”, do you mean 20 miles west, or 100 miles west (the latter of which would actually be Cornwall)? As a rough guide, you can expect the former journey to take around 40 minutes, the latter more like 3 hours. But you can find all this out using a route planner such as Google Maps.