UK Car hire for an European road trip - is this possible?
All advice appreciated! :)
How long is the question? Expensive is the answer :-)
I recently priced up a motorbike to do the euro same and it was cheaper to buy the bike (new) then dispose of it at the end of the trip. 3 months.
Way back I priced up a hire job to do the states and ended up buying one then selling it for more than I paid for it after some 4k miles.
B
Yes, it is possible, though more practical to hire a car in a mainland European country as you can then travel around most European countries without any issue as European Insurance policies cover all EEC countries (something else the UK looses out on after Brexit)
If you need the car in the UK to start the journey then there are a cople of options really to keep the costs down.
You could hire a UK car and just take it to France, once there visit a large car hire location (normally one of the main city airports) and ask to swap the car for a LHD vehicle.
The other alternative is to contact the car hire company (one of the big providers Hertz, Avis, Europcar, Sixt etc) directly at one of their large locations (Heathrow for example) and ask if they have any LHD cars that they need returning to Europe. Quite often they have a couple hanging around that UK renters don't want to hire in the UK and will ost them money to either send back on a transporter truck, or get an employee driver to take back for them. It works the other way as well.
Imagine quite a premium, if they would even do it. Will they keep the UK car at location awaiting OP's return (effectively having to hire 2 cars) or get the car back to UK and back again to France to await OP's return? Both seem unlikely TBH.Originally Posted by Kris
Hertz used to do exactly this, called the "Le Swap" program. Hire a car in london, drive to folkstone and over on the Eurotunnel, then at the Cocquelles terminal swap the car for a LHD equivalent and off you go. Thn the same in reverse on the return journey.
The program was stopped a couple of years ago, officially as i guess not enough people used it, but if your UK car "happened" to develop a fault such as a "rumbling noise at highway speed" then if you took it to one of the hire company's larger locations in France or whichever country, I'm sure they would swap it for another car, which in 90% of cases would have to be LHD.
You'd probably be stuck with the LHD car for the journey back to London once you had crossed the channel on your return journey, but that wouldnt be that bad for just the one journey back home.
Last edited by Kris; 9th August 2019 at 15:16.
Driving in Central London isnt much fun. If you just need the car for the mainland europe Roadtrip you would be better off either flying from London to one of the mainland countries, or if you are sightseeing in London, jump on the Eurostar to either Brussels or Paris and then rent the car there.
We looked into doing a one-way car hire last year from London to Amsterdam to take the cat to the new home, only Sixt could do it at £1000 for 48 hrs.
in the end used a pet courier who took us and the cat in a comfy big Mercedes for £800 plus VAT!
Door to door and no driving, and with an ex traffic Sergeant driver we got there fast too!
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