Rental Car in Romania
 

Hey all,

We plan to rent a car for our time in Romania and will be renting from and returning to Targu Mures Airport. The trick is that we will be returning the car very early (around 4am) on a Sunday, which rules out some of the companies like Sixt who are closed on the weekends. We could possibly return the car late on Saturday, but several places are still closed then.

I was planning to use EuroCars, but then I've found several bad reviews of them charging for the littliest thing upon return or cancelling reservations, so I'm not so sure.

Can anyone recommend a company that will work with our return time?

The other major Romanian rental, Autonom ( http://www.autonom.com/ ), accepts weekend/night time drop-offs but with all sorts of extra charges (weekend, night time, airport etc.), up to €40-50 in total.

Thanks flat4, I hadn't looked at their site. I'm fine with those extra charges up front, I just don't want them trying to charge me for tiny dings or scratches that were already there when I picked up the car (which is what some reviews said about Eurocars).

I'll investigate some more.

Based on many people's reports of pot-holed roads, would you recommend getting the extra daily excess insurance? We usually do not get it, but it seems like it might be a wise expense in Romania.

Also, many people are talking about smaller dirt roads and possibly even snow through the mountains even in June. Would you recommend a 4WD vehicle? Or is it not worth the extra cost?

Thanks for any feedback

The excess car insurance would be a good idea.

A 4WD car isn't very necessary; the dirt roads are passable with any vehicle if you slow down and snow in the mountains can be found only above 2000m, few roads go that high.

We do hope to be drive through the Transfagarason Road. I know officially it's not open til July 1, but from other posts on fodors and throughout the internet I've been told it's been open on 10 June and 25 June the past two years. We're hoping it will be open when we need it (22 June) and didn't know if having a 4WD would make the difference in whether we could take the road. Maybe that it a silly question. Maybe it's just open or not and it doesn't matter what type of vehicle you have. Does anyone know?

Yes, we actually talked about the Transfagarasan some time ago.

If it's open it will also be cleared of snow and in that case it can be done in any type of vehicle (even tiny city cars). The important thing when doing that road isn't really 4WD - the main thing is to have good brakes because there are very steep descents, sharp turns one after the other etc.