Rental car vs taking your own on road trips

[disneysteve]

I figure I own the car for a reason....to drive it!

This was exactly my attitude with my car. But would you do it with a 10 year old car with 150K miles?

Absolutely. We do it all the time. Our 2000 Toyota Sienna has 150,000 miles on it and we drive it from NJ to Florida every summer. We'll do it again in August.

My 1998 Toyota Camry also has 150,000 miles on it. In the past month, we drove it to NY one weekend and Connecticut another weekend. Those were shorter trips but I'd be just as quick to drive it 1,000 miles if the need arose. We just generally take the van for the longer trips.

When either car reaches the point where I no longer feel comfortable taking it on a long trip, that's when it is time for a newer car. If I don't trust it to go far, I don't trust it to go short distances either.

[NetSkyBlue]

The only time I would consider a rental is if I didn’t trust my car to make the trip without breaking down, or if my car had very poor gas mileage, and would save money on gas even after the rental fees.

[dh1989]

I'm with the group who says they own the car to drive it. I do all my own repairs so reliability isn't an issue. My car should be at close to 200k mi by the end of this year between driving for work and vacations.

I think the only time I'd think about a rental was if I wanted to test-drive a certain model car that I was considering buying. A long-distance trip seems like a great opportunity to try a new car (newer used car in my case) if you're going to be car shopping in the near future.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Mostly we drive our own. But we do rent because we have needed bigger, ie minivans, versus subcompacts that we have.

A big consideration is road trips sometimes are more fun with more people but not necessarily all in one corolla. So a minivan makes sense instead of buying a bigger car for only a couple days a year.

[Like2Plan]

Before we bought our first minivan (we are on our third now), we rented different minivans to drive down to FL for our vacation to see how we liked the various models. It took us 3 years to actually buy our first minivan. Trying out the minivans did sell us on buyng a minivan and it helped us figure out which one we liked the best.

[DebbieL]

I'd rent. I'd far rather put the wear and tear on a rental vehicle. You can often get very cheap rates if you bid for the car rental online. That's what I do. My own car insurance covers rental vehicles too, so I don't take the expensive coverage that they offer.

[disneysteve]

I'd rent. I'd far rather put the wear and tear on a rental vehicle.

At what point do you make that decision, though? Yes, taking our car on vacation puts wear and tear on it, but so does driving it to work or the supermarket or the mall. We went to a funeral yesterday. Even though it was "local", between driving to the funeral home, then the cemetery, then the family's home and finally back to our home, we logged nearly 200 miles. Should we have rented a car to avoid wear and tear on ours? I just don't see the point in us owning a car if we aren't going to drive it when we have somewhere to go.