<BR>We are travelling from Australia next May and wish to hire an automatic car for four persons to visit the Cotswolds in England for a day. We are also visiting Italy and intend to hire another automatic car at Florence, travelling through Tuscany and dropping the car off in Sorrento a week later. Then, off we go to Sicily where we would like to have a car for another three days. Contrary to my opinion, my travelling companions have been told that it's much cheaper to rent when we get there but I am not convinced. What do you think?

If you must have an automatic you may need to make your reservation in advance, at least in Italy. Most of the rental cars are standard shift, so I would be concerned about the availability of automatics. <BR><BR>Also, the automatics tend to be luxury cars and rent for a lot more money, like twice as much. At least this was my experience in the summer of 2001. My traveling companion could not drive a shift, but because of the cost for an automatic, we agreed that I would do all the driving.

In general it is MUCH less expensive to rent before you leave home. Renting on the day will cost much more. And, as Marilyn says, if you leave it til you are "in country" the chances of getting an automatic are pretty slim. (Even when you reserve an automatic ahead of time, there sometimes are non available)<BR><BR>So to save money and try to ensure an automatic you must book early.

Lots of better choices for finding lower rental rates if you book ahead. And you should be able to confirm a good price with no cancellation penalty, so that if you find an unadvertised promotion at the counter of another company (rare, but it can happen), you can go with that lower rate. www.autoeurope.com is a good place to start.<BR><BR>Also rare to get a good rate for less than a three day rental, whether pre-booked or not. Having said that, I have had a good experience with Woods Car rental in UK, for rates of less than three days. Not sure about their inventory of automatic tranmissions cars. See their website at http://www.woods.co.uk<BR><BR>And last of all, I'll prepare you for dire warnings about the need to watch out for car theft since your plans are to go south of Rome. No actual bad experience to report, but the car rental companies will stress this.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

A couple of years ago we needed to rent a car in the UK for just one day. Although I'm a big fan of AutoEurope, they would not offer anything less than three days, but Hertz gave me a very good rate for just one day. <BR><BR>Although I am one of those people who does not know how to drive a standard shift, my travel partner does. Our first trip to the UK, we had a coupon for a free rental, but followed most suggestions we got which was to upgrade to an automatic. That upgrade cost us more than the original standard car would have cost normally! And after just a day of driving, my partner wished he had stuck with the standard. Driving was not that difficult, and he later learned that once you are switching to driving on the "wrong" side of the road and being on the "wrong" side of the car, that adding the shifting is really just part of the same picture -- and not difficult at all.

It is less expensive to make the reservation before you go. Also, while automatics are more expensive, they are not twice as expensive as a standard. As someone else said, though, the agencies don't always have very many of them on hand, so it's a wise idea to book that in advance.

I quite agree with Patrick. If you can drive a standard transmission on the right hand side of the road, then driving on the left hand side of the road will force you to make a new adjustment, and shifting the manual transmission will be a natural part of that adjustment.<BR><BR>There is no difference in the order of the pedals, from left to right: clutch, brake, gas.<BR>