Rental Cars I Have Known

I wonder how old the rental car business is? I know as a child, receiving the National Geographic in our home, I regularly saw advertisements for Hertz and Avis, featuring the glamour of the chromed-up full-sized sedans of North America of the time, the 50s and 60s. Now, of course, if you're willing to pay the price at the top end, you can rent everything from the smallest economy box to luxury and high-speed performance cars. Car rental has become big business.

When I decided to make my first foray into renting cars, I actually did it in a big way, which I have never replicated since. It really wasn't with any great intent that this happened though. It came about in this way. I lived just south of Portage Avenue in Winnipeg and there were car dealers and car rental agents along that thoroughfare not far from my abode. One in particular, I believe it was a name from that time, Airways, was offering cars at $19 a day; this was in 1968. That seemed like a pretty good deal.

My friend from Canadian Mennonite Bible College days, Bernie Thiessen, whom my relationship with had grown stronger by my working in his home community of Rosemary Alberta a couple of summers earlier, then moving in with him and another ex-CMBC’er Bruno Klassen, was getting married. Since Bernie's wife-to-be Kathy Sawatzky came from MacGregor and we were living in Winnipeg, it was decided to have their wedding in Portage la Prairie, in between. Bruno had a car but Bernie did not. That called for some extra transportation, which was where the rental car was going to come in handy. Taking things and people out there on Friday and bringing them back on Saturday after the wedding and reception was going to require some space. I also thought it would be useful to be able to go and visit my grandparents and other relatives in Winkler one last time on the Sunday, as I was moving to Saskatoon the following week.

I rented a brand-new Plymouth Barracuda fastback, a red one. It was probably a 340 cubic inch V8, with automatic transmission on the floor. It did indeed come in handy on Saturday night, as there were some large wedding gifts that needed to be transported back to Winnipeg. I think I remember items such as floor mops or something like that.

Then, Sunday afternoon I headed out to Winkler. Being a young, red-blooded Canadian, I thought I needed to test this sporty car out on the straightaway of Number 23 Highway once I got away from Morris. I was nearing Lowe Farm when something blew. It was the water heater hose. Perhaps 105 miles an hour was creating too much pressure! I remembered that a friend of my father's, a Mr. Braun, who had come to help us build our house in Loon Straits a decade earlier, owned a garage in the town. I limped into town and located him and he was kind enough to patch things up and get me on my way - at a more sedate speed thereafter.

I was only taking black and white pictures at that time, as color prints were not yet very reliable, and I had not yet graduated to slides or transparencies. Therefore, I have one such photo of the car in the middle of my grandfather's driveway area.

I am not sure, but I think my next experience with a rental car was driving a 1970 Ford Galaxy sedan from Winnipeg to Elkhart, Indiana and back in the winter of 1970. I had  traveled from Saskatoon to Winnipeg to join my brother Les, his friend Kathy Bergen and others from CMBC and the Winnipeg area as we motored to an open house at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries. I remember how impressed I was by my first experience driving on the broad, multilane toll-road through Chicago. After a while, one developed the art of slowing down, with the window down just enough to throw the required change into the big bins at the tollgates and rev the motor up again to race back onto the next stretch of highway. On the return trip, driving in the middle of the night, wanting to get home to Winnipeg sooner rather than later, I remember getting stopped by state troopers. We were lucky to get off with a warning. Another car that we were traveling with had to backtrack to a local town and pay the fine right then.

I thought I had finished this essay when I realized there were 2 other car rental experiences that I needed to insert right here. Interestingly, I had just come to this point in the article on my proofreading it.

When our firstborn, Ansel, was not yet 3, my employer managed to get a much-needed locum to replace me while the 3 of us went on a vacation. The young couple coming over from the UK stayed in our home while we took a spring vacation to Eastern Canada. It was really still winter in 1982. We landed in Toronto and picked up our rental car for this trip, a gray Plymouth Reliant or K-Car as they were known. with a dark red interior. We visited Fort York and the Black Creek Pioneer Village. We also explored Mennonite and Amish country around towns like St. Jacob's and Elmira. We had a nice ethnic Sunday noon Mennonite lunch, fried potatoes, apple betty and all, in a converted old farm storage building which, as I recall, was part of a somewhat boutique complex. Then we traveled east to Montréal but even more so to Québec city, which we had never explored before. For our lodgings we got a nice place in an older hotel, called I believe the Château Laurier, across the street from the Québec National Assembly. That gave us a nice center from which to explore the old city and Place Royale down at the river level. One day we even went farther east to Sainte Anne's  and the large church/ healing shrine there and  nearby Montmorency Falls, including a driving circuit of Isle de Orleans. Our Readers' Digest/CAA guidebook describe the different forms of architecture indicating the ages of the homes we saw by their roof, chimney and window/dormer structure. It was notable that there were 4 old Catholic churches on the island dating from the 18th century. 

Then, the following summer, 1983, Anne's cousins Harry and Grace came to stay with us to attend high school in Canada. Anne's father accompanied them and their mother to help bring them over and get them settled. We began their stay with a trip to Eastern Canada, ergo, another rental car. Since there were 7 of us, we had no choice but to rent a larger vehicle, which turned out to be one of those faux-wood-sided Chevrolet Impala wagons, with 2 little seats in the rear, red plush velour like the rest of the interior, facing each other, where the youngest 3 mostly sat. We had driven to Winnipeg, from where our flight to Eastern Canada left, in our new 1983 two-door GMC Jimmy, so we were somewhat crowded, not to mention that it was hot and that the vehicle still did not have air-conditioning. Just the same, it was otherwise a nice vehicle and the only one I ever factory-ordered.

Again, we started in Toronto, visiting Niagara falls, then motoring up to Ottawa, including a tour of the Parliament buildings to the top of the Peace Tower. Then we went on to Montréal, before returning to Toronto and home.  Because of some dissension in our group about the costs of motels,  we ended up staying in a few places that were less than what I would've liked to make my father-in-law comfortable in. 

It was a few years after that before I rented another car. Life got busy and we just did not do that kind of traveling. However, in 1986, I decided to take our son Ansel, then 7, to visit his grandparents and also to attend Expo 86 in Vancouver. We stayed at family friends from our Winnipeg days, the Died Reimers, in Surrey, and took advantage of the brand-new Expo line skytrain to commute from that suburb to the site of the exposition. However, in the middle of the week, to expedite the visit to Vernon, I found a car at what was then known as Rent-a-Wreck. I was trying to save money. I got a dark blue 1984 Mustang coupe, which I thought might be fun. However, for its size and weight, especially going through the mountains, the new four-lane toll Coquihalla Highway of all things, it was probably one of the most gutless cars I've driven; it only had a 4 cylinders. I guess it's an example of you get what you pay for.

It may not have then been until 1988 when we went to Disneyland in Florida, with our children then age 4 and 9, that we rented again, first a red 4-door Suzuki sedan and then a grey 4-door Nissan Sentra. We only rented each of these cars for a day or 2 at a time, as we did not need cars for the duration of our trip. These were obviously both small economy cars but the Suzuki got us down the Pacific coast to San Juan Capistrano, a destination I had heard about since my childhood days. It is the place where the swallows return on March 19 every year.

Besides my interest in cars, which should now be evident, I am also something of a birdwatcher. Some might find those 2 pursuits incongruously incompatible, but they both have to do with beauty, one man-made and one natural. Either way, I attribute the source of beauty and creativity to the same Creator, even though expressed via different means.

I think the swallows had already arrived for the year when we were at the mission. We had stopped en route to check out the ocean and also to have lunch at one of those nice 50's style diner cafés with the black and white tiled floors etc. Both cars managed, somewhat surprisingly, to get us through whatever parts of freeway we had to traverse around Los Angeles without any trouble though, in spite of their size and power, or lack thereof.

It was only 2 years before we rented again. In 1990, my Department Head, Dr. Gary Sloan, at Brandon Mental Health Center, offered a week at a resort in Florida for the unbelievable sum of $105. Since there was a lot of snow and the temperature was hitting -30°C, I thought it would be good to give our father-in-law, Anne's father, a break. We took Dr. Sloan up on the offer and soon our family of 4 plus both of Anne's parents were in Orlando, Florida. We found our way from the arrivals terminal to where a van picked us up to take us to the car rental agency. It was after 9 PM, already dark. I remember the warmth and the humidity compared to what we had left behind. However, as we headed out farther and farther into the night on the highway, I began to wonder apprehensively where this van was taking us. Where we being kidnapped? Then we began to see the huge acreages of car rentals along the highway and realized what people meant when they said that Orlando was one of the major tourist destinations. It was late, but once regard our car, we still needed dinner, so when we arrived back in Kissimmee, near our destination, we stopped at Perkins for our first meal in Florida. Perkins was a new chain for us at the time, although it was soon to open in Brandon as well. The car we were driving was a blue 1990 Chevrolet Lumina, a brand-new model, with a V6 that was large enough to get us around. The farthest we went was to Cape Canaveral to see the Kennedy Space Center.

I think my next car rentals took place when our son Ansel was at UBC. Once Anne, Anika and I went to visit him and I believe the car we had on that occasion was a dark green Ford Taurus wagon. Anika did not remember having been in Vancouver before, perhaps had never been, and so was somewhat nonplussed when our first stop after the airport was on the mountain at Queen Elizabeth Park and a man stepped out of a service van near us in the parking lot without being too shy to relieve himself in full view, albeit with his back to us. That was her welcome to Vancouver.

On another trip to visit Ansel, which I may have made on my own, my vehicle was a late 1990's model Toyota Corolla. I think we rented another one on another occasion when I also came with Anne and Anika. Then, in 2004, when I stopped in Vancouver en route to join Anne in Taiwan for a visit with her family, I rented a red two-door Toyota Echo. It was March, and there was still snow on the Coquihalla Highway, the car took me all the way to visit my parents in Vernon and back with no trouble. These last 3 or 4 rentals were all made from the Budget Car Rental at the corner of Pender and Abbott, an agency which no longer exists on that location near our Beatty apartment.

Our next series of car rentals was in Montréal, visiting our children when they were attending McGill University. I think this may have been when I first got a free upgrade to a larger car than what I had reserved. What we got was a full-sized Chevrolet Impala, light tan in color, to stay at a resort near Mont Tremblant, while we skied there. Later in our week, while we were having lunch above a food court in a shopping center in downtown Montréal, my bag with my camera got stolen, so we were lacking in pictures from that trip, including of that car.

A car I wanted to try at the time, because the manufacturer tried to pass it off as somewhat of a sporty vehicle, was the Pontiac Grand Prix of the day. We managed to get a dark brown model on a subsequent trip, which took us to another ski resort timeshare in the Laurentians. I think that was the time I ended up paying more than I needed to because I forgot to redeem my Airmiles car-rental certificate when I picked up the car! Then, the year Ansel graduated, 2004, and we had reserved a timeshare at Lake Magog, we got another free upgrade. This time it was to a sporty-looking and powerful enough red Chevrolet Monte Carlo Coupe, in 2004. That one took us back and forth to Montréal several times. When Anne and I had been in this area the previous fall on a visit, we had toured the same countryside in another full-sized Chevrolet Impala. We had enjoyed the colors at the time, of course, the typical Eastern autumn, but it made us want to come back and see the same area in spring, when there would be more birds around. Remember, I am also a bird watcher.

During the years from 1989-2005, when I was working for the Brandon Regional Health Authority and doing rural psychiatric consultations, I had car rental experiences of a somewhat different nature. I was  able to rent vehicles for those trips. The organization's “bean counters” thought it was cheaper to do that than buy vehicles, which I did not mind. When I had been working under the Government of Manitoba at the Brandon Mental Health Center just prior to that, really the same job, the agency had owned vehicles - lackluster Chevrolet Cavaliers. For the most part, the rentals I was now driving included Chevrolet Malibus, Impalas and even the upscale Oldsmobile Intrigue, which was a fine car to sail along through the country with. The Malibus of those years were quite all right too. I would use these to go to Rivers/Minnedosa/Neepawa, Dauphin, Shoal Lake/Myrtle/Russell and Souris/Virden, as well as Wawanesa/Boissevain/Killarney. Of course, I was not paying for these cars personally. I always picked them up at the local Murray Chev-Olds-Cadillac dealership, so they got to know me well.

In 1998, we returned to Orlando to spend Christmas week in our timeshare there. Perhaps that was the time we had the Ford Taurus wagon, perhaps we had one twice. This time we drove up to Silver Springs one day for a nature safari and on another day northwest to the coast and St. Augustine, stopping at Daytona Beach along the way.

In 2005, we move from Manitoba to British Columbia. Our trusty 2005 Dodge Stratus broke down between Brooks and Rosemary Alberta on a hot Saturday afternoon. Fortunately, my cousin Heidi and her family lived a half hour drive away and came to pick us up, while the car was towed to the garage in Brooks for repair. We had to take possession of our condominium in Richmond on the following Wednesday. When it was evident by Monday that the car was not going to be repaired in time to get us there, we rented a Pontiac Montana minivan from a small family agency in Gem, east of Rosemary. We picked the car up right off their rural acreage. Anne, Anika and I took this to Richmond with everything that was in our car. We left Anika at the apartment and returned to Brooks. The car still was not repaired. It wasn't until we spoke to the manager and he intervened that we were able to get on the road Friday and begin our journey back to Richmond, arriving by Saturday night. 

I had never rented a minivan otherwise, but when our Child and Adolescent Treatment Center in Brandon was able to eventually lease a Chevrolet Venture minivan, I sometimes used that on my rural trips. On one occasion, when the temperature was harboring around -30, I inadvertently backed into a protective steel pylon at the Virden Hospital and quite nicely damaged the vinyl rear bumper at that temperature. Fortunately, I did not have to pay for that $1500 touch.

In 2006 then, Anne and I returned to Manitoba for a visit. We rented from National and got another one of those free upgrades. Instead of motoring out to Brandon to visit our former friends and neighbors in some little econobox, we got a silver Nissan Maxima with all the extras. I must say I was not overly impressed with its dashboard layout though. On a couple of my other trips to Manitoba, which I subsequently made alone, as Anne does not appreciate my style of ad hoc traveling and visiting, I had cars such as Hyundai Elantras. Then, as if to make up for that, when I went to take the Canadian School of Peace Building course at Canadian Mennonite University in June 2011, I got a real upgrade. Instead of some compact, I was given a bright orange brand-new Dodge Charger for my first weekend there.  I could hardly contain my glee when I calmly answered in the affirmative when the agent asked if this would do. That was fun cruising down Portage Avenue with on Sunday afternoon, especially when my identical twin car showed up in the lane next to me. It reminded me of the good experience I had with the Mopar brand in my very first foray into car rentals.  Those were definitely highlights of my car rental experiences. I rented a car again the following weekend, but that was only, I believe, a n older Pontiac G5. It was from some new car rental agency on McPhillips Street, far from the airport, that I had never heard about before but got through a cheap deal on a website.

In the fall of 2012, which was when I made my Manitoba visit that year, en route back to Richmond from a conference and visiting our son in Montréal and friends in the Toronto area, I again rented a car. I wanted to go to Brandon to visit friends and my nephew and his wife and see their new son. Guess what? Another free upgrade! I got to drive a full-size Nissan Altima, which was a car I would not have minded buying when we ended up getting a Honda Accord in 2005. After spending the night at friends' after a late arrival and less than  the full day Sunday in Brandon, I picked up my brother Les in Winnipeg and we went out to visit our cousin Patti (Braun) and Doug Enns’ B & B at Whitemouth near the Whiteshell Provincial Park area. There had just been one of those early season snowstorms - this was the first half of October - and there was still a lot of snow around. So much for our hopes of canoeing on their private lake there. Turns out Les remembered babysitting Doug when we were neighbors in North Kildonan in Winnipeg decades before. 

The next day we went back to Winnipeg and then I also went out subsequently to visit my aunt and uncle Anne and Marvin Enns, mother's youngest and only remaining brother in Winkler, which I've always done on my visits back to Manitoba. He's my closest remaining link to the Enns farm in Burwalde, which has almost sacred memories for me. It is a place, where my mother grew up, and where I also spent many happy hours as a child and young man with my siblings and cousins.

We had another interesting experience with our last, as in most recent, car rental. We had arrived once again in Orlando to spend a week in a timeshare. However, this time we actually had people in the area to visit. The main reason for going there was to visit my niece Lisa, Les's daughter, her husband Javier and their twins Sofia and Cesc, whom we had not seen. We were all four from our family together again, Ansel having come to join us from Montréal, thanks to our Airmiles. The car rental agency, Advantage, offered us a Fiat 500! As if we could have all fit in there let alone our luggage. I would have loved it if it had just been myself. However, practicality prevailed and we were able to arrange a reasonable upgrade to the Kia Fortis, which was the first time I drove something in that line. It was a dark brown four-door sedan. It was surprisingly peppy cruising up and down the Florida highways, even though you noticed the kind of car it was when you slammed the back doors - a little tinny sounding. However, it took us to the coast again, although this time we went to a wildlife refuge instead of a space center. It also took us to Legoland, not to mention several visits with my niece and her entertaining twins.

I have probably missed some rental cars, which obviously were not standouts. I don't think I have pictures of all of them either. However, I obviously remember the ones that stand out and which were most unique or enjoyable. Of course, I  will remember some because of the trips they were part of. With getting as many free upgrades as I have, to some interesting cars, renting a car has become somewhat of an interesting game of chance as to what one will actually get, in spite of my usually reserving something on the smaller end of the scale, just to get me from A to B and fit my overall lifestyle aims of keeping things on the simple side. More so, in recent years, also becoming more aware of the environment, global warming and the carbon impact, we have tried to use public transportation and walk instead of always going for the car rental. However, I have been fortunate enough to afford some of these vacations where we did have the freedom and mobility of the automobile to explore farther afield than would have been possible otherwise.

After I had finished this article I realized I should include another aspect of this story I had not covered. Besides enjoying the trips these autos took me/us on, there are two things I could add. The first is that in spite of all the miles put on with rental cars, we have never had an accident. The 2nd is that we have never really run into trouble with a rental agency for overcharging or trying to extract money afterwards for things that they say they found wrong with the car later, as we have heard stories about some people experiencing. So, in that regard, all I can say is, thank you God!

Happy vacationing to you too!

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