We are looking for a replacement for our current car and our local dealer has 3 “daily rental” 2015 Chevy Cruz vehicles in their used car inventory. They are all about $17,000 CDN, with mileages from 11,000km to 21,000km. Would a year-old rental car be a good buy (are rentals normally disposed of annually?), or are these likely to be lemons that the rental company is dumping?
Are there any significant differences between a fleet model Cruz and a standard low-end model? I wouldn’t expect there to be many options but are there any standard features that would not be included?
I’m trying to get some idea of what I should be looking for before we go in and talk to a salesman. We’ve only bought two cars in the last 35 years (I was carless before we married), and one of those was a private sale used car and the other was new but one of the last left on the lot after the end of model production and they really wanted to sell it, so I don’t have a lot of experience at car buying.
They aren’t likely to have the best features available on that model but they will all have air conditioning and automatic transmissions at least. They will probably have the base, naturally aspirated engine rather than the slightly more economical and slightly better performing turbo engine. If there are particular features you care about, you should check on that particular car.
Major rental car companies in the U.S. do turn over their cars once per year or so, and in my experience, often before the cars hit 18,000 miles (29,000km) and definitely before the cars hit 30,000 miles (48,000km) even if the cars performed perfectly the whole time. Perhaps the lemons get sold a little more quickly but I’m not sure. Maybe Canadian car rental agencies turn their cars around even more quickly than U.S. agencies.
Many used car buyers feel that rental cars must have been abused by people who didn’t care about them. Rental cars also may not get their recall repairs performed before they are resold. Perhaps that’s true, but at least they have regular routine maintenance by an experienced fleet manager. You can check with a local Chevy dealer to learn if there are open recalls on the particular car you are interested in if you can provide the VIN number (which–for pedants–no one has ever referred to as a “VI number”). If so and you agree to buy the car, the manufacturer would pay for the recall repairs even though you bought it used.
My grandmother and I both bought used rental cars and both performed perfectly for years. Your experience may be different.
While parts of this are factual (the differences between models for example), other parts of this involve advice and opinions. Overall, this is better suited to IMHO.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Rental cars suffer a lot of abuse just because of the different driving styles of the hundreds of people who have been behind the wheel. People do jack-rabbit starts, stomp on or ride the brakes, slam the doors, over-rev the engine in lower gears, blast the stereo, etc. Most people set the seat height/distance once and never change it; a rental’s seat adjustment mechanism takes a lot of abuse, as do the window motors. I’d have it checked out.
What model of Cruz? If it’s an LTZ, it’s top of the line with leather interior. I’ve rented several. Solid build, some pep, good shape to the trunk (holding suitcases etc…), good audio and phone hookup, excellent mileage. Only fault to me was the short seat cushion in front. I’m 6’2", always felt like the front of the seat was cutting into the bottom of my thigh on a LONGER trip. Seat adjustments didn’t help. Quick trips didn’t bother me at all.
Check the tires for any uneven wear, check the wheels for any significant curb gouging or dents, check hard braking with your hands off the wheel for straight tracking, insist on a wheel alignment.
On the other hand, many people take BETTER care of things they borrow that do not belong to them, and don’t want to be held liable for damage to property that’s $20 grand+ on the low end, among other things. I’m certainly rougher on my own cars (and more likely to ignore minor issues) and property than those I rent/borrow- whether it’s from Enterprise or my Father-in-law/friends/strangers.
I interpret the OP as saying this is a car the dealer itself used as a rental/loaner for customers to drive while their cars were in for service.
and your characterization of how rental cars are abused is amusing but mostly fodder for stand-up comedians. I’m sure there are some cases of people driving like assholes in rental cars, but I highly doubt more than a slim fraction of renters (i.e. nobody but dumb, twenty-something guys) drives a rental car any differently than their own car. I know I don’t.
and there’s no truth to the myth that rental cars are built worse than retail cars. It’s possible (though I don’t know if it’s real) that a sufficiently large fleet order can select option combinations not normally available. But there’s no broadcast to assembly plants that they’re going to be building 10,000 cars for Enterprise this week, so use the reject trim parts and skip a layer of paint. The window sticker is one of the last things to be put on the car before it hits the end of line, the folks in the plant actually building the cars have no idea that any car is destined for a rental fleet. It’s very likely that the low-spec car you are renting was built between two fully-loaded customer special-ordered cars.
