Buying a used car from a car-rental company

Anyone tried it? Some of the deals from Enterprise seem tempting.

 

I sort of did.
The previous owner was a rental company, but I got it through a dealership.
It had been hit on the driver side pretty well; finally figured out the rattle in the driver door was broken glass.
But since they did the repairs inhouse, it didn't show up on Carfax.
So be careful and ask a lot of questions.

 

Most rental cars have been driven all to hell. Tread lightly.

EDIT: What slappy said.

 

Do not do it. Have you ever rented a car? You sign that insurance, then go out and drive that thing like Paris Hilton in a cheap, $10-an-hour motel room in the middle of downtown Memphis. And it gets hung up wet. But I digress. Those cars have typically been ridden hard, harder than your average car.

 

There was a great line from Hunter S. Thompson.

(Paraphrase from memory)

"What can you drive faster, a front-wheel or a rear wheel?"

"A rental"

 

I've done it, no complaints. The car had what they in the industry call "baby miles." Fewer than 2,000. No smoke smell, no signs of wear inside or outside the vehicle.

 

I've never rented a car without taking a dump in the backseat.

 

They're not always driven hard and they do have their routine maintence kept up pretty well. I've test-driven a few but never bought one more because my brother is in the car business and can usually get me a pretty good deal on a new or low-mileage used car.

 

I would strongly consider buying from a second-tier rental agency like U-Save which, generally, markets its own used cars.

I'd be less interested in one of those big Hertz sale lots. Not impressed when I have checked those out.

 

Yeah, the routine stuff like oil changes are pretty consistent. But suspension, frame and all that other stuff is just battered and abused.

 

I used to work for ESPN on some road shows. We had a saying about rental cars... "all rentals are off road vehicles". It's not like we wanted to wreck them, but if we needed to drive over curbs to get where we needed to be that was going to happen. I would never ever buy a rental.

 

I have a program car that was a rental. It's not a horrible car, but everyone else is right... they've had the hell driven out of them. Within my first six weeks with the car, the check engine light came on five times. It was under warrenty, so I just took it back to the dealer where I bought it and they fixed whatever the problem was each time. Since then, the light has never come on.