Would I be crazy to get a used Hertz rent to own '13 Prius with under 40,000 miles for 18k??

My personal opinion is for that little of a savings, it's just not worth it. It's my personal opinion, however.

 

hi Karen my wife and I've recently rented a 2013 Prius from Enterprise for two weeks and round the car had 30,000 miles on it cloth seats just your basic entry level model but it was nice so there is nothing wrong with getting A Prius from a rental company and you could save a few dollars take it from someone who just got his 2011 Prius back from an accident.if you get the used 2013 you won't get the 2 year warranty I don't believe so that might be something to consider

 

I believe the new car is the best value here if it can be purchased for $21,000. You get 1 year newer at 2014, plus 40,000 fewer miles, and the peace of mind of having a 3 year 36k miles warranty.

I've always calculated the depreciation in a Prius to be around $1000 for every 10,000 miles the car logs. So in your case, the 40,000 should have a minimum discount of 4000 dollars from new to make it worth while. Based on my way of calculating, a Prius with 250,000 miles would be worthless (considering the MSRP to be $25,000)

 

Personally I wouldn't buy any car that was a rental or fleet car. For one they're usually the very base model. The biggest thing is you don't know how the drivers drove it. Put it this way would you take your car to the mall and leave the keys for people to drive and return while you shop, risk of theft aside? Probably not. That's what a rental car is.

If the savings is the deciding factor between the rental vs new why not consider certified used or used? You could probably get a local trade used/certified used for the same price as the used rental. Plus a certified used would have the extra warranty.


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Should avoid buying rentals usually they are abuse by customers, they do a bad job of keeping up with their service on time and within mfg guidelines (for instance they may use lower quality oils for their engines, go 1k-2k miles longer on their oil change intervals, running their cars on low fluids ie motor oil, coolant, brake ect ect the list goes on) and their cars usually retires when the original mfg warranty is up, and think of the millions of god knows what happened moments that may have occurred in the car's interior.

 

Would you be crazy? Probably, but it's up to you.

I think the $3k savings is a false perception of value. How many years of driving would it take you to get to 40k miles? How much are you going to spend on maintenance in the first two years of ownership that would be free on a new car? Unless you're paying cash, also consider what the financing cost would be, as used vehicle loans often have much higher interest rates.

Value/costs aside, as a very regular Avis car rental customer in many cities both domestic and abroad, I can tell you that you should never buy a previous rental car. Every car that I drive goes through a pretty extensive series of exercises including testing acceleration, braking, redline, power shifting, etc. Right or wrong, this is what I do for fun while I'm traveling for work, makes for some interesting comparisons between cars, but I can only imagine that other people do much worse than this.

Have you owned or driven a Prius before? I think renting one for a week or so is an excellent idea to see if you like the car, but don't buy the rental.

 

Let me know when your car hits 250k, and I'll take it off your hands.

 

I've never owned a car past 200k but if any of my Priis make it that far, I'll give it to you.

 

That is a reasonable rule of thumb. The only exception I can think of would be a Prius, simply because I do not expect the people who would *want* to rent a Prius would abuse the car.

Like JC though, I would expect more than a $3k discount after 40k miles.

 

Rental car would scare me. Who knows what has happen to it in the last 40k miles. That's a lot of miles.

 

You can never know for certain how many people that rented a car "wanted" to rent it as opposed to something else. The Prius could have been the only thing available for some of those hundreds of people that rented it.

 

If the trim levels are equal, I don't think $3000 buy in "savings" is worth it.

You've got to value driving off the lot with a vehicle with near 0 miles on it, in which you are aware of it's maintenance and driving history since "birth". As well as having the new car warranty.

And my evaluation-read opinion- is that SOME people tend to abuse rental cars, given that by definition they are rental and NOT their own.

You could probably do worse in a used Prius purchase. But for $3000? New is new.

Unknown driving treatment and history, with uncountable numbers of different drivers + 40,000 miles already on the odometer? I'll pass.

 

Every used car is different whether purchased from Hertz or other source. I rented a 2009 for the three day trial period and took it to the local dealership for assessment. I was honest with the service advisor, told him how much Hertz wanted, and asked him if I should instead shop at their used lot. When he was finished he pointed out normal wear and tear issues but said he thought that it was a good deal and short of recommending I buy from competitor, he said that is what he would do. At 70k all it has needed are two service bulletin repair along with 12 volt battery and new tires. In my case it was a very good decision. That dealership got my maintenance business even though it's not the closest to my home.


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I would like to add, 40k miles in one year is very high usage almost 2.25 X times the amount of what a average commuter would per year which is 15k per year. This equates to high wear and tear per year

 

and who knows what's been going on in the back seat?

 

TBH I wouldn't touch any rental car. I'd get the new Prius for the reasons other have listed above.

 

It seems like every time we have a rental car there are always issues with it. I would avoid a used rental car.