[quote=briansd1]I’m not fond of American cars… but after renting a Chevy Aveo at Newark, I think that the bailouts weren’t such a bad deal. It was $150/day for a car (including tax) at Newark, so I didn’t feel like paying more for better car.[/quote]
Oh brian, brian, brian. I just priced a standard full size car (Impala) at $52/day for a 1 week rental.. if that was Newark, NJ. Try hotwire.com to book auto rentals. A “Premium” car was $62/day, “Luxury” car was 103/day. Luxury = Cadillac DTS or Lincoln Town Car…
I do agree that American cars have been getting much better. I had to recently rent a car while making repairs on my antique monster. I decided to try different cars. The new Mustang really surprised me. The V6 is a serious sleeper. The Impala, though dated, gets very good gas mileage and was actually nicer to drive than the more ‘updated’ Camry. The Impala seemed a bit sedate until you put the pedal past about 80%.. at which point it accelerated fairly quickly. The position of the window/lock controls on the new Camry seemed a bit awkward. I found the Nissan Altima to seem a bit cheap and plasticy.. though it handled corners pretty nicely. The small engine of the Nissan was fairly quick at acceleration though the CVT took a little getting used to. I found that the Mazda 6 needed a bit of an updating and wasn’t quite as comfortable to drive as the others. On the other hand, the headlights of the Mazda 6 are great. Nice clear projector type lens. I tend to prefer the European Z beam/H4 standard over the US SAE standards for headlights.
