San Francisco Fly drive - good car / classic
Discussion
I wanted to go to SE Asia again this year but the Mrs wants a fly drive in the San Francisco area. I have agreed on the proviso that we can get a good car. When i=I say good I mean a stereotypical American classic, old trans Am, Mustang or Cadilac softtop sort of thing.
Any advice on companies that would hire these sorts of cars would be useful
I'm sure other Piston Headers that have done Flydrives will have wanted to do them in something other than a boring Hertz car?
Any advice on companies that would hire these sorts of cars would be useful
I'm sure other Piston Headers that have done Flydrives will have wanted to do them in something other than a boring Hertz car?
HereBeMonsters said:
Herman Toothrot said:
No suggestion?
Search?I'd be interested to see how this thread develops as I'm looking to do exactly the same thing for our honeymoon in August/September and I'm having difficulty finding something interesting to hire for an extended duration.
Hertz do the Mustang, either hardtop or convertible, and Avis do the Camaro. The website won't let me arrange the date/car combo I need so I've dropped them an e-mail to see if we can sort something out.
Cheers
Mac
Mac. said:
HereBeMonsters said:
Herman Toothrot said:
No suggestion?
Search?
Did I ever say I was in charge of things? I was merely advising the OP that a lot of people are probably reluctant to reply as we've had 20 million of these threads in the last few months. With a basic search he could find that out, and get the information he needs.
http://www.exoticcarrental.com/
Looks promising!
Going on the above, just saying search or using that oh so funny "let me google that for you" link is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. If you have nothing useful to say why bother posting?
Looks promising!
Going on the above, just saying search or using that oh so funny "let me google that for you" link is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. If you have nothing useful to say why bother posting?
HereBeMonsters said:
Herman Toothrot said:
No suggestion?
Search?If I can't get a classic then something like a modern soft top mustang will be ok.
Edited by Herman Toothrot on Sunday 31st January 16:56
Just think about your request for a second.
In fact, I'll turn it around and see where we end up.
I want to come over to England for a fly-drive holiday and rent a good/classic car, something like a 3.0l S Capri or a Humber Super Snipe to thump around the countryside in. Which company would do that for me?
In fact, I'll turn it around and see where we end up.
I want to come over to England for a fly-drive holiday and rent a good/classic car, something like a 3.0l S Capri or a Humber Super Snipe to thump around the countryside in. Which company would do that for me?
Bugeyeandy said:
Thanks for the suggestion 
All the links from SF area go to real prestige stuff, all new Ferraris, Lambos, Astons etc very nice but not what I'm after.I'd like something like :-
I definately want an American car and ideally no younger than early 1980's
Maybe a Smokey & the bandit style Trans Am would be good?
Here's the thing - mainstream rental companies (Hertz, Avis, Budget, Enterprise etc) rent mostly mainstream cars. As mentioned, a few have 'fun' or 'premium' offerings too. That means you can pay extra for something like a Mustang or a Camaro or a Challenger/Charger (the VAST majority being 6 cyl docile crusiers that are less likely to get ragged, shagged or wrecked than their V8 counterparts). Yes, you can rent an 8 cyl Camaro or a Corvette from Avis and Hertz also offer Corvettes, Hummers and the like from certain tourist oriented locations.
If you are especially fat in the wallet, you can rent all manner of exotica from specialist renters - but the costs are enormous (with everything added-up, $800-$1000 per day, for something like a Gallardo or an R8).
Maybe there is a specialist somewhere who could rent you a T/A or a finned Caddy convertible - but good luck finding him - I wouldn't know where to start and frankly renting out old clunkers like these would not make business sense, as demand for old clunkers is so small.
I'm not sure why, but there seems to be a bit of an expectation on here that US car rental companies will somehow have armadas of hot-rods on their lots, waiting to have the balls revved off them by loony tourists. It isn't so.
In reality, mainstream US rental fleets are about as inspiring as English ones.
If you are especially fat in the wallet, you can rent all manner of exotica from specialist renters - but the costs are enormous (with everything added-up, $800-$1000 per day, for something like a Gallardo or an R8).
Maybe there is a specialist somewhere who could rent you a T/A or a finned Caddy convertible - but good luck finding him - I wouldn't know where to start and frankly renting out old clunkers like these would not make business sense, as demand for old clunkers is so small.
I'm not sure why, but there seems to be a bit of an expectation on here that US car rental companies will somehow have armadas of hot-rods on their lots, waiting to have the balls revved off them by loony tourists. It isn't so.
In reality, mainstream US rental fleets are about as inspiring as English ones.
This company will rent you pretty much anything you want....but as said, at a cost!
http://www.bhrentacar.com/
http://www.bhrentacar.com/
mondayo said:
This company will rent you pretty much anything you want....but as said, at a cost!
http://www.bhrentacar.com/
Well thats offering more along the lines I was after, prices from £160 a day that'll get you a classic with no roof and a 5.7 V8, not too bad.http://www.bhrentacar.com/
The classic car hire marketplace in the USA is unusual. They love their own classic cars and imported most of the British made Austin Healeys, Jaguars, MGs and Triumphs, so you would expect there to be a huge market for hiring classic cars in the US, as there is in the UK.
This is not the case as the US insurers aren't keen on the idea ( I think they don't understand the market). They seem to think that insuring classic cars for self drive hire, probably including muscle cars, around 30 to 40 years old, with possible reliability problems and without modern safety equipment, is very high risk. Which is isn't but that is a separate story.
So there are relatively few companies hiring out classics. Have a look at the US page on Classic Car Hire World www.classiccarhireworld.com/contentok.php?id=766 which lists a number of companies around the US hiring out either classic or modern sports cars, including BHRentacar already mentioned.
You will see that the number of companies isn't huge.
A couple of other comments worth considering.
What are you thinking of doing? Many people want to drive from LA to Vegas and leave a car there, or from SF to LA etc. A lot of people, myself included fancy driving Route 66 at some time (2,500 miles). The classic companies are generally fairly small and not keen on long distance or one way hire. They don't have the resources of Hertz who can handle one way hires without a problem.
Your best bet may be hiring a normal modern car, or even a modern Mustang, for most of the trip and then treating yourself to a classic for a couple of days to cover a specific area.
One other point when searching the web. In England we 'hire' cars. In the US they 'rent' cars so you will get a better response from Google by searching for 'rent' or 'rental'.
And finally - how do I know all this. I have been running a classic car hire company in the UK since 1997 - The Open Road Classic Car Hire, I run courses on starting up such companies and have trained people from the US and I run the Classic Car Hire World website.
Enjoy your trip.
This is not the case as the US insurers aren't keen on the idea ( I think they don't understand the market). They seem to think that insuring classic cars for self drive hire, probably including muscle cars, around 30 to 40 years old, with possible reliability problems and without modern safety equipment, is very high risk. Which is isn't but that is a separate story.
So there are relatively few companies hiring out classics. Have a look at the US page on Classic Car Hire World www.classiccarhireworld.com/contentok.php?id=766 which lists a number of companies around the US hiring out either classic or modern sports cars, including BHRentacar already mentioned.
You will see that the number of companies isn't huge.
A couple of other comments worth considering.
What are you thinking of doing? Many people want to drive from LA to Vegas and leave a car there, or from SF to LA etc. A lot of people, myself included fancy driving Route 66 at some time (2,500 miles). The classic companies are generally fairly small and not keen on long distance or one way hire. They don't have the resources of Hertz who can handle one way hires without a problem.
Your best bet may be hiring a normal modern car, or even a modern Mustang, for most of the trip and then treating yourself to a classic for a couple of days to cover a specific area.
One other point when searching the web. In England we 'hire' cars. In the US they 'rent' cars so you will get a better response from Google by searching for 'rent' or 'rental'.
And finally - how do I know all this. I have been running a classic car hire company in the UK since 1997 - The Open Road Classic Car Hire, I run courses on starting up such companies and have trained people from the US and I run the Classic Car Hire World website.
Enjoy your trip.
I've been looking for something similar recently for my honeymoon later in the year and have just turned up the usual suspects such as bhrentacar. I do have a book from the early 90's by Colin Burnham written about 100 or so classic american cars from the 50's and 60's that were available from National Car Rental at LAX. Unfortunately it seems they no longer do these 
We are looking to drive the PCH so the mileage restrictions on a classic may be our downfall (along with the cost!) so I'm thinking I may have to resort to the Mustang/Camaro route unless anyone has any suggestions. My OH really wants to do the drive in a classic though so if there is anyone out there that could suggest anything I would be very grateful.
We are looking to drive the PCH so the mileage restrictions on a classic may be our downfall (along with the cost!) so I'm thinking I may have to resort to the Mustang/Camaro route unless anyone has any suggestions. My OH really wants to do the drive in a classic though so if there is anyone out there that could suggest anything I would be very grateful.
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