I just got back from Portland last night on business and I learned several things about life and finances that you would not expect to learn from Portland.  Its a nice city, lots of trees, too many clouds.  Well ok so the lesson really didn’t come from Portland or the business part, but the traveling part.

Whatever you do, do not buy a car that has been used as a rental car.  I really don’t care what kind of deal you think you are getting, it is not a deal.  I read an article just now in between writing this sentence and the last sentence that said a good way to save money on buying a car is to buy a used rental car.  I am going to go ahead and say I disagree 100%.

This weekend my colleagues took our rental car jeeping (it was not a jeep, but rather a charger) and did some road testing.  It was all in good fun and didn’t harm the car, but we were mild compared to some of the stories I have heard.  Allow me to give some examples of things I have heard:

-car being thrown into park while on the highway going 60
-car being jumped (over a variety of things)
-blatant disregard for speed bumps, humps, traffic calming devices and sometimes curbs. Late braking, hard accelerating, off roading, overloading, and every form of general abuse you’d never inflict on your own vehicle
-driving with parking brake engaged
-use your imagination
Now, you might argue, only a minority of people play around with rentals and an even smaller minority severely abuse them and that may well be true but the truth is even just the normal wear and tear on those cars is unbelievable.  99% of all rental cars lives have been spent purely in stop and go traffic (the worst kind of miles for cars) and many of them at one point have had a user that severely abused them.

The car being under warranty is no promise that it wont be totally hosed 2k miles out of warranty.

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