Car rental MXP to NCE
 

I'm helping my friend plan a trip from Malpensa to Nice--with lots of scenic stuff in between. I'm fairly good at booking hotels by internet but I've not had much experience with car rental. I tried Expedia which offered an automatic with required Collision Damage Waiver (said for anything in Italy) plus drop charges, etc. for 1091 euros for 13 days. AutoEurope also requires collision damage waiver for a car in Italy but offered a manual Lancia two door at 827 euros. That still seemed steep to me but I'd like other opinions from people with more knowledge and experience with car rental. Is 827 euros for 13 days, picking up in Malpensa Italy and dropping off at Nice airport France an ok price? Thanks for any comments or advice.

The AutoEurope price is about twice what I paid for one week last fall. Sounds pretty good to me.

Have a great time!

By the way, if your friends can drive a standard transmission they can save a lot of money. They are considerably cheaper. Also, the CDW is a legal requirement in Italy.
Judy

JMV - Sounds quite steep to me too. We paid €240.00 for a one week hire recently, all inc. - but for a small car (Vauxhall Corsa), manual.

You can make a big saving by:

- NOT renting at the airport (- this carries a big supplement with most hirers)
e.g. 14% with Avis (- €100-150.00 on a 2-week hire)

- dropping off at or near the border e.g. San Remo, - rather than Nice. (It's only a short train ride ...)

- hiring a manual trans. as Judy says.

- hiring diesel rather than petrol (- can save on fuel costs in Europe)

- having only one named driver.

Hope this helps ...

Steve

First, you're renting an automatic, then in Italy you have to rent with CDW.
We rented in France only 2-yrs back for 13-days - a small automatic and we took the CDW, it cost about $650, but there were no drop off charges - though there are some small fees payable upon pick-up like second driver, road tax.

You'll save some money if you can go with a manual and diesel, that's if you can drive manual - we couldn't, so we went automatic. The car was perfect size, plenty of room for luggage of two people; petrol was high about $3.75/gallon then (now about $4/gallon), but we avg. 35mpg. and we put on over 1000 miles during those two weeks.