Car rental in Portugal--any suggestions?
 

We have to rent a car for our summer trip to Portugal. I have heard that car rental is very inexpensive in Portugal. So far the best deal we can get is about $450-$500 for five days for a medium size sedan with automatic transmission (we can drive only automatic). We plan to take the car in Lisbon (near the train station, preferably), drive to the Algarve and back to Lisbon to return it.

Is this a good price? Any agencies that you used and were happy with?

Thanks a lot.

We had two rentals last year, one in Portugal and another for Spain, on the same trip. We used AutoEurope for both rentals. The car rental in Portugal was more expensive than Spain which surprised us since everything else in Portugal was less expensive than in Spain. Run the numbers with Auto Europe.We always rent a manual in Europe; you will pay much more by renting an automatic. Both of the cars they arranged for us were with Europcar.We had excellent service and great cars.

That does sound about right for an automatic---check with Autoeurope by phone at 800-223-5555

We also used AutoEurope to book a rental in Lisbon (the actual rental agency was Europcar), and the rate you have sounds correct. We had no complaints about the car or the agency. I'm not sure, but I think that we were given a car that was in a larger class than what we actually reserved.

My husband ususally drives when we travel, but because the automatic was about 4 times more expensive than the manual transmission, we decided that I could do the . We had a car for 11 days - so you can imagine the cost of that. I think it also worked out better because we ended up with a smaller car, which was really nice in some of the narrow streets and parking spaces we found in the more rural areas of Portugal.

We also found that a GPS system was helpful, and we rented ours through AutoEurope.

We've used AutoEurope and Europcar several times in England and Scotland too, and have never had any problems there either.

Thanks a lot for all the help. Since you think the price is right, we'll just go with our current reservation, which happens to be with AutoEurope that you all liked. It is amazing how much being restructed to automatic hurts you in Europe.

They have the best customer service to make things right after the fact---I have used that several times.