Considering that I have rented a vehicle manufactured by Honda only twice during my years of travel all over the world — an Accord in the United States on a fluke; and a CR-V in New Zealand — motor vehicles which are manufactured by Honda are typically not available at rental car facilities because Honda does not sell fleets of vehicles for a variety of reasons, as I first explained in this article here at The Gate on Sunday, June 12, 2022…
I Found Hondas Available as Rental Vehicles
…so imagine my surprise when I spotted two vehicles which were manufactured by Honda in a small parking lot outside of a Hertz local edition facility in Georgia while I was returning a car which I used for a week.
The first vehicle was a white Honda Accord…
…and the second vehicle — which was only two parking spots away — was a blue HR-V.
I automatically figured that the two vehicles belonged to either employees or customers who wanted to rent a vehicle — so I asked the employee who was handling the return of my rental vehicle.
“No, they are available for rent,” she confirmed.
She was not sure of how they were purchased — but they likely were not acquired as part of a fleet.
She also laughed when she could not tell me why one was never assigned to me when I rented vehicles at that facility in the recent past.
Final Boarding Call
I am going to try to find out how the rental car facility managed to acquire those Honda vehicles to rent out to customers. Was full price paid for them? Were they acquired at a discount? Was there some sort of special deal which was agreed upon by all parties? Was the corporate office of Hertz involved at all?
When renting a vehicle from a rental car company, you might have noticed that the description is usually a model of a vehicle “or similar” — meaning that even if you try to rent a specific vehicle, you are not guaranteed to get it upon arrival because the facility may not have the vehicle in stock for a variety of reasons…
…so even if you know that a facility will rent vehicles manufactured by Honda — and even specifically request one of them to rent — you still may not be able to rent one…
All photographs ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
