PT Cruisers on slow ride to scrap heap - dumped into rental fleets

[BlueStreak]

139. That recall thing is a huge problem for car rental fleets

I know this from first hand experience. Nobody wants to endanger their customers. Regardless of the morality, that would result in much higher insurance costs. It makes no sense to keep unsafe vehicles on the road. But likewise it makes no sense to force a fleet to group every vehicle the day any possible recall is issued.

A key thing to understand is that even the worst recalls involve vanishingly small numbers of problems in the field, and those are usually only experiences under really unusual conditions. And when there is a major recall, such as the Toyota braking or acceleration issue from 3 years ago, the dealers are backlogged for months working through those recalls. You cannot expect a car rental fleet to ground its vehicles for months waiting for the dealership to get the vehicles serviced -- especially when we are talking about a situation that is extraordinarily unlikely to happen to the rental customer.

The car rental companies work closely with the manufacturers. Quite often the manufacturer will give the fleet specific instructions so that they can do a quick test to see if the recall condition is indicated on any vehicles. Of course, if a serious safety indication were found, any of the major car rental companies would ground THOSE SPECIFIC VEHICLES immediately.

My comments only apply to the major car rental brands that you are likely to find in the airports or on the major sites like Orbitz and Expedia. In any city, there may be lots of little car rental operators and you never know what they might do. Some of them actually buy wrecked cars at salvage prices and do the minimum work to get them back on the road. Others buy cars at auction as they come out of the big car rental fleets, then they put another 90,000 miles on them with minimal maintenance. I'd never get into any of those vehicles.