What Can a rental car do??
 

This Thread is inspired by a recent post VR had about Seth Thomas driving a rental car so hard that it allegedly quit running; and a recent Thread about the Helicopter Pilot doing stunt like maneuvers in a Cayman S. All of us drive cars for more than just transportation and if you are like me and travel a decent bit for business you find yourself in a rental car frequently. Everyone reading this has tried a stunt and/or a maneuver in a rental to see if it was capable of the task, or perhaps you recently rented a Die Hard movie and wanted to try one of those tricks in the movie. Regardless, let's here your best Rental Car story; yes for entertainment but also I need some more tricks for my upcoming trip.

At a Braselton Driving Club event many years ago, there were some guys from CA who flew in and rented a compact car for the weekend at Road Atlanta. They were doing the One Lap if America and were hitting several of the tracks before the big event. Anyway, they drove the snot out of the car all weekend, wearing out the brakes and chunking all four tires so bad they were concerned about getting back to the airport. The engine was on its last legs as well. They were a rolling chicane all weekend, but it was great to see them out there.

Another time, it was a HOT July or August event at Road Atlanta and some guy had a large red impala that turned out to be rented. He was wearing all black and had to be burning up but he was thrashing the car out there... All the way until he came out from turn 11 under the bridge and he swapped ends. He ended up going off track right and hitting the embankment on the driver side, even going over far enough to dent the roof. This was before they lined the track with concrete and you just had to worry about the Georgia red clay. He had two flat tires in addition to all the sheetmetal damage. He was towed in and I'll be damned if he didn't get the tires re-inflated and go back on the track! I guess he didn't have anything to lose at this point...

A rental Neon can travel on 2 wheels for a fair distance when jumping curbs at Mid Ohio. Also, Mitshubishi makes a car that can get airborne over railroad tracks......so I have heard:)

This thread is going to be good!

Dave, it was my rental car, and Seth was teaching me Road Atlanta in it. Entering 10A, it sort of...um...shut itself off temporarily. :rolleyes: Not a great location for that to happen. It restarted eventually.

Needless to say, we did not take it back on track the rest fo the weekend. I had to muddle along driving his GT3 and a nice M3 race car, as well as a couple of sedate laps in James' WC car.

I did a NASA racing school at Willow Springs a few years ago and a guy was there in a rented Ford Taurus. I had to do these side by side driving exercises next to him and the car was body rolling badly and the tires were squealing like crazy. Later in the day he blew out one of the tires on track. It was ridiculous, they probably should never have let him on track with that thing..

...and then there are the epic Grand Marquis rental car track sessions at BMW events at Barber. :roflmao:

I thought it may be an interesting Thread and a great story telling opportunity.

I have no track stories with a rental but I can tell you how to drift in a Front Wheel Drive Car. I had a Stratus or some Dodge product recently for a friends wedding. At the reception I "borrowed" a few serving trays which I placed under the rear wheels and pulled the E_Brake to secure them. With the front wheels providing the power and a full steering available (front wheels) you have yourself a "Drifting Machine" I can tell you that the friction will burn through a serving tray faster than you think, so steal a few.:icon107::burnout:

Lemme tell you how I "tested" this FWD Caddy from the GSA motor pool on the tarmac of the private airport down the street from Sears Point before my boss George Shultz & Colin Powell got into it ;) That's me in the drover's seat (back when I had more hair), making sure my MP5 was secured under the dash.

Now that is creative! You sir are an evil genius.

My favorite rental car story: my friend went to Germany with his wife with the intention of touring the country. He rented some 4cyl Fiat ****box with a 5 speed. He said it would do 125 tapped out in 5th with a long lead or 130 in a good draft. Anyway, after 7 days of "touring" he was headed back to Frankfurt to go home when it started to make horrible noises. He limped it to the rental return and took off. He is my hero, I aspire to use-up a rental car someday:)

........and I wonder why I can't rent cars until I'm 23 :roflmao:

There should be some good stories in this thread, when my dad first started teaching anti terrorist schools the school cars were all rentals. :icon107:

My Dad's first attempt to teach me 'car control' was in a Dodge Mini Van in Meixco two years ago. :D It was awesome!

we uh, MAY or may not have rented a Dodge Charger and proceeded to have back-to-back autox laps of it with 6 co-drivers at least year's Champagne Run. Er I mean, No, who would do such a thing :D

Some years ago at an Instructor Training day, we rented a fleet of Lincoln Town cars. The idea was to teach smoothness a big cushy and heavy car would be the best tool, especially with 4 people in each car. I was astonished at how fast we could lap in those things, powerful V8 helped. By the end of the day,the cars had fried brakes and tires worn to the cord on the outside shoulders. We decided to return them late at night for obvious reasons. I think we are now banned from Hertz.

Best,

There was an Hertz Corvette yellow with black strip and all at Sebring 2 weekends ago.

Think what you can do with a set of track wheels, if you want to be a repeat customer at Hertz you might even change out the pads for track worthy stuff and bring it back with original tires and pads...

Just mark every insurance box and off you go....

In Puerto Rico once I had a little Toyota - after driving all around PR like an autocross my friends and I took it to the top of the mountain in the El Yunque rain forest via the fire service roads. It was definitely on it's last legs when we returned it.

In college, a bunch of us rented a caddie and drove from Albany, NY, to Houston, TX, in 19 hours. We didn't abuse it, per-se, but we drove it flat out for quite a while. I remember racing a guido (no offense to guidos) in a white T-bird super coupe on the interstate in Tennessee - he had those black "driving gloves" with the holes on the knuckles and the aviator sunglasses... At a buck twenty-five, he lost his nerve and became a speck in my rear view mirror.

Boy, I hope these stories never get back to my kids...