How may one go about to rent a car in London? Do they charge the same way they do at US?

I hope you dont want to rent a car to drive in London. That would be incredibly foolish and incovenient. If you wish to rent to drive out of London that would not be a problem. Yes, rentals are similar to the US..just remember that the steering wheel will be on the R and that there is a premium for an automatic shift. Try autoeurope. I find them very helpful and usually an excellent price.

What's the easiest way to rent a car? Would it be the airport?

where are you going? Renting a car from London may or may not make sense. You definitely DO NOT want a car in LOndon itself.

The best place to pick up a car depends on where you are going - and where you are starting from . . . .

There are both US and UK car rental companies in the UK. Searching for the best deal can be a tedious task, but there are some deals. Sometimes going through a consolidator (like expedia, orbitz etc) gets the best deal, other times going to the individual rental agency works. Typing london car rental or london car hire into google will get you an endless supply of options.

As travelbunny said, there is a premium for automatic in the UK but it's not huge. In Ireland, it almost doubles the price of the renatl.

If you are arriving at the airport and going to virtually anywhere but London, the airport is your best bet. As everyone said, you don't want a car in London. Driving is extremely difficult for anyone who has never been, and probably not easy for the natives. It's also expensive if you drive into central London as their is a congestion charge for being there. Just say no.

Bill

As everyone has noted - renting a car for London is ridiculous. There is generally a lot of traffic, there are fees to bring the car into the city and it is both inconvenient and expensive to park it. (Use feet, public transit and/or cabs.)

If you are doing a driving tour of the countryside rent the car at the airport. They have the major american brands as well as a bunch of european brands.

Which is best for you depends on a whole variety of factors - including how many of you there are, how big a car you need, if you want to (or can) drive manual (unlike the US most cars in europe are manual transmission - which I find rather much along with driving on the opposite side of the street), drop off charges based on your itinerary, what affiliations/discounts you have etc.

You need to do a major search of the various websites to see which is best for you. If you seach below you will see lots of recos on specific companies.

You also need to contact the issuer of the credit card you will be using to see what their rules are for offering free insurance - it varies from card to card, type of type (regular versus gold or platinum or black or?) and bank to bank.

IMO one of the "easiest ways" is to use either www.autoeurope.com or their sister company www.kemwel.com and know the location in the London area where you want to pick up a car.

I suspect you may pay a surcharge for picking the car up at the airport but if that's where you are arriving it is probably the simplest method.

For reasonable car hire prices I would also consider www.bluecarhire.com. They have about 30 locations in London.

JohnBhoy: You have posted six times on Fodors and <b>every</b> time it has been to flog the same website. Advertising is not allowed on Fodors.

Cheaper to book car hire before you leave than do it there. There are many choices = Sixt, Alamo, National, Europcar. My practice is to know which direction I'm heading for from London, and search for a car pickup depot that is in outer London in that same direction and that is also near a tube or rail station.

For example my next trip I've planned an itinerary that leaves London from the NE to Bury St Edmund via Chipping Ongar and some charming villages like Thaxted, Finchingfield, Cavendish, Long Melford &amp; Lavenham. Alamo Car Rentals have several outer-London depots that would give me easy access to the North Circular and out towards Chipping Ongar via Chigwell, but I have narrowed them down to Enfield &amp; Barking on the grounds that these two are an easy walk from rail stations Edmonton Green &amp; West Ham respectively.

We rented through AutoEurope. They had a free size upgrade on their website, so our car was $295 for 10 days.

We left London on a Saturday morning, and picked up our car at National's location at Marble Arch. It was very easy to get out of town, but if I was going to pick up a car on a weekday, I would do it at whatever airport I was going to depart from.

We reserved a manual transmission, since Mr. Pickle didn't want to pay $90 more for an automatic. When we went to get the car, they were out of manuals, so we got an automatic for free. Mr. Pickle was very grateful!

Lee Ann