vinolover has interesting information; my husband and I paln to be in Tuscany for 6 days... Sept. 16 to 22 this fall. We checked out the rental site in Chuisi (www.kemwel.com) and the cost of a car from Monday to Saturday was $315.39 USD Ar a Frommer's travel talk forum we found the address www.autoeurope.com and it showed the same car at $301.13 USD. I made the same request at both sites within 5 min of each other. Also a week ago, autoeurope showed a car avaiable to us for $291.00 USD. How soon should we book a car and what can explain the varying rates?? Any ideas??
Now I have another question you may be able to help me with: How do we get to Chuisi with the least fuss and/or expense?

Kemwel and AutoEurope are sister companies. Rates vary from one to the other, and can be less expensive on one site or the other depending on dates, times, etc. I kept checking both and found that for our dates Kemwel was cheaper so that's who I used. If you find a cheaper rate on AutoEurope use them instead. I've used both and the service was the same (very good).

Both of these companies are agents, NOT rental car firms. You book through them and they book with a local firm (Hertz, EuropeCar, etc.).

Chiusi is on the main train line between Rome and Florence. It is about the halfway point. We didn't want to drive all the way from Florence so we took the train to Chiusi and picked up the rental car there.

We took a Regional train rather than an IC train. Our train was very comfortable and about half the price of the IC train. We paid 17.60 Euro for two people. It only took about 15 minutes longer than the "fast" train so we thought for the price it was a better deal. Since we were traveling in the off season we didn't need seat reservations so taking a Regional train was fine plus the departure/arrival time schedule worked out better for us.