After my Opa (grandpa) passed away in September of 2018 just shy of his 95th birthday I went to Germany for his funeral in October 2018 and because it was much cheaper than flying into Bremen, Germany, I flew into Amsterdam and got a rental car for the ~3 hour drive.
I booked through the German auto club ADAC with Hertz and since it was only my two-year-old son and me, I booked a compact (Ford Focus or similar). As a member of the Hertz rewards program I get to choose any vehicle in a designated area. From previous experience I know that especially at airport stations in Europe, you can really luck out and get a much nicer vehicle for the same price.
Plus, I was going to Germany, so naturally I was excited about that, thinking I could get myself into a nice, late-model, fast car.
After an uneventful flight we finally got to the Hertz counter at Schiphol airport, where we were told to proceed directly to the parking garage, because of my reservation and membership. Once there, we were told we could pick any vehicle in the area indicated next to my name on the overhead screen. I had already seen the area walking to the entrance and there were some nice vehicles (BMW 3-series, DS-Automobiles by Citroen, Mercedes A-Classes, C-Classes, and nicer Golfs (GTDs and GTIs) and a variety of standard Opel, Renaults, Peugeots, many of them wagons).
But wait! Why is my name not on the screen? I ask one of the attendants and he points me to a little office in the middle of the vast parking structure. I went into the office, talked to the lady behind the counter, and as it turned out I had an expired credit card in my Hertz account. She told us we’d just have to run a card for my deposit and we’d be on our way, since they have everything else up-to-date in my account.
Unfortunately, in cases like mine, they assign a specific vehicle to the rental. I asked if I could choose from the other area, but she told me they had as many cars as they had customers with reservations coming in within the next half hour or so (it was a Monday morning and the transatlantic rush-hour was in full swing)) and I’d have to wait about 30-60 minutes until they transferred more vehicles from their remote parking lot. Being with my two-year-old who was already getting queasy, I decided to just take what they had assigned us.
An attendant walked us to our car which was a Ford Focus wagon. It was black over black and looked sporty, but I thought, was just a base, rental spec Focus.
After I got our luggage, stroller, car seat and my two-year-old all stowed and strapped in, I got in to adjust everything and get ready to go.
The car was extremely well equipped for a rental Ford Focus, it came with the ST-Line package which sported spoilers in the front and rear, side skirts, upgraded titanium grey rims with low profile tires, rear diffusor and chrome exhaust tip on the outside, as well as heated, power adjustable leather/alcantara seats, black headliner (I’ve always been a fan), the Sync3 infotainment with navigation system, dual automatic climate control, a nice flat-bottom, very solid feeling steering wheel and parking sensors as well as a host of electronic driver aids and a heated windshield, as in actually heated inside the glass. It even had a pretty lively little ecoboost turbo engine and it was a six-speed stick.
So, after I felt a little disappointed at first about getting “just” a Ford Focus, I felt like this could just be a nice little cruiser for the next eight days. And it was. Entering the dutch freeway with its 100kph/62mph speed limit I noticed the engine was lively, but didn’t really have a way to test just how lively it was past that speed. As soon as we crossed the border into Germany and onto an unrestricted part of the German motorway network (Autobahn), I gave it full throttle to see what it could do, and, wow! In little time we were to 200km/h (~125mph) and still going. We ended up getting to 215km/h (~134mph) before we had to slow down for a large motorway intersection. What a nice surprise. As it turns oput my little rental had a 1.5 Ecoboost engine with 148bhp and some 240Nm of torque (177lb-ft).
What a blast! Turns out not having a current credit card on file got me into one of the most fun rental vehicles I’ve ever had, but I would have just passed it over, had I had the choice of any vehicle in the designated area.