Fancy car rental - LA to Vegas!
 

Heading back over at the end of April next year for my partners 30th. We are thinking of driving from LA to Vegas and would be great to hire a fancy car to do the trip!

Can anyone recommend any companies that wouldnt mind us doing a one way trip and leaving the car in Vegas?

Any ideas will be welcomed!

What's fancy?

Look on hertz.com for their selection of Mercedes, Vettes, et al.

Once you get to Vegas, you can rent a Ferrari or the like, if you want.

BTW: you'll pay through the nose to do a one way on a fancy car.

Actually rates are usually much better for foreigners (on the one-way rentals).

My cautions are that in addition to a steep daily rate, take care that you are not paying mileage as well.

If you are not returning the car to the original rental location, most of the rental companies charge an expensive drop charge. On a luxury or sports car, one ways may not be available at all.

Several of the rental chains: Hertz, Avis, National, Budget offer fun cars from some of their Southern California locations. You will have to do your web site work to search availability and convenience to your stay.

The best place to start to answer this question is at Kayak.com, which allows to search several URLs for one-way car rentals. You can also specify the class of car you want -- luxury, premium, or convertible.

I was easily able to find several of the above car classes for a one-way, one-day rental between these two cities for about $200. The key is to pick it up right as you're leaving for Vegas, and then drop it off in Vegas before 24 hours have transpired.

Another place I've done well at is Hotwire.com
Since a car is a car, and Hotwire only lists the biggest name brands, it generally doesn't matter from which company you get a luxury car, as long as it's a luxury car. Note, however, that you give your money to Hotwire when you make the reservation, and you can never get it back -- you pay for the car even if you never make the trip.

What ar eyou actualy looking for? there ae companies that rent luxury and specialty cars - although don;t know if you can return to a differnt location. You can easily get a Rolls or a Bently or a Ferrari or whatever - but be prepared for very high rates. (I'm not aware that regular rental companies have these available.)

There are lots of options for the sporty/expensive car thing..I'd start at carrentals.com

Usually no drop charges for Aussies and Brits if you rent from Alamo or National or Hertz.And the insurances that you need will be included in the rate quote.

es, but those companies typically do not rent sports or luxury cars.

Please note that Ms. Flighty has not deigned to respond in the last 5 days.

Methinks that any response is / was a waste of time.

PaulRabe - How does one website make it the "best" place to look? I, personally, don't have a lot of use for kayak. Maybe you do, but I tend to verify my choice by looking at multiple sites.

Rasta -- please re-read my post. I didn't say it was the best place to look, I said it was the best place to START.

If you want to find the best deal on car-rentals by going, one site at a time, to Hertz, Avis, Thrifty, Alamo, Fox, National, Enterprise, Payless, RentaWreck, Budget, EZ, Advantage, Discovery, Midway, Dollar, etc, etc, etc; fine. I'd rather have someone do that for me, particularly since Kayak does it for free and in a matter of seconds. I thus find only the rental companies that have (1) an office close to where I want a car, (2) an office that's open at the time I want to start or end a rental, (3) the type of car or rental policy I'm looking for, and (4) a price much better than others. This saves a LOT of time. And, because Kayak checks car companies I'm not even aware of, I might also save a lot of money.

When I reduce the sites I need to visit to the few (and it's usually only one) that meet my needs with a good price, I then jump to that site through the Kayak link.

One great feature of Kayak is that it allows me to enter one search criterion, after which Kayak does the same search on its competitors' URL. I can then check out Hotwire or Expedia or Priceline or CarRentals (any combination, including none) with only one entry. If one of Kayak's competitors finds a much better deal than Kayak, I go to that site for a closer look.

Kayak also allows me to save searches, so that, if I think I need to check for prices every few days or there's a search I do several times, I can just check on that search

I've tried other sites -- Travelocity, Hotels.com, Orbitz -- and I use Hotwire and Priceline on occasion. But I keep coming back to Kayak. If there's a better site, I'd love to hear about it. And, until someone does tell me about a better site, I'll conclude I'm completely justified in calling Kayak the best.

Rent a fancy car in both places. Return the car to LA and fly to LV and rent another fun car. Avoid driving I-15 from Victorville to Las Vegas. The Mojave is not that interesting even in the daylight.

Rasta. I do have a life outside of planning my holidays and havent had a chance to get online and thank all the people for their great suggestions!

I appreciate all the ideas and have started researching various companies to use whilst over there.

I was also looking to hire a fancy car for the drive (one way) but had a terrible experience, see below and be careful! Good luck!

**Buyer beware/Word of warning about Beverly Hills Rent a Car (www.bhrentacar.com)**

I'm from Australia and I am organising a bucks party for 8 people to Vegas. At some point we will be driving from Vegas to LA and was looking at hiring 3 classy convertibles for the one-way trip.
I did a search on the internet and found a few forums which mentioned www.bhrentacar.com (and their sister site in Vegas www.bhlasvegas.com) so I decided to give them a go. They had a special offer on their website for a 20% discount provided you book in May.

So on May 29th I gave them a call around 10am (Sydney time, which is 5pm Nevada time) and spoke to a gentleman named Jon. He seemed really nice and when I began asking about hire for my situation he asked if I could call him back on Friday (31st of May) as it is closing time at their shop and he had to leave. For all I know he may have had a prior engagement so I didn't think ill of the request and asked if he could still guarantee me the 20% discount on Friday even if it takes another day or two to send the deposit etc.. he said there was no problems with that.

So Friday comes along, and rather than calling him at the end of his day I decided to stay up until 3am so that I could call him in his morning. Another gentleman by the name of Chris answered and told me that Jon was not available at the moment. So I explained the situation to Chris, where I was calling from and what I wanted to hire etc. He interrupted me and asked if I could call back later as a customer had walked in and he needed to service them. I asked him how long did I need to wait to call him back and he said 45 minutes. I wasn't about to wait an extra 45 minutes (keeping in mind, it is now around 3:15am where I am and I have an angry wife wondering why I'm not in bed!) so I asked for his email and to forward the email I send them to Jon. I also told them because of the time difference I would prefer if we could continue the conversation by email. Chris said that is fine.
So I sent an email with all the information I was requesting and Jon never got back to me that day. I finally received a reply on Monday (2 days later) from Jon who said he was unavailable on Friday and apologised. He then went on to say that the cars I am looking to hire are out of my pre-specified budget. I replied asking him to quote me anyway (as the cost will be split among the 8 of us and I'm sure we could absorb some additional cost). He didn't reply that day so I sent another email the next day and I also called him to make sure he got my emails. He answered my call and apologised, stating that he doesn't check his emails often and that he thought I no longer wanted the cars. I corrected him and asked him to send me the quote. Jon agreed and promised to send through the quote that day by email. Again, no email received.
I called again on Wednesday and reminded him to send the quote. He was very nice to me on the phone and suggested I try other car rental companies like Hertz (which is not very professional to shun business this way), I explained we wanted the cars that Hertz or other rental companies dont provide for the Vegas to LA one way trip. He finally agreed to immediately send me the quote by email. Again, nothing after we hung up the phone.

It is now the 7th of June and we haven't made ANY progress. I sent another email but no reply. I am now looking in to hiring from else where and won't bother with these clowns.
I hope the loss of time and terrible experience I had serves as a warning to others. Please don't waste your time and money with these fools, they simply do not deserve it. They are as sweet as pie when you call them, but they're full of hot air with hollow words and empty promises. They will not follow through with what they say, no matter how nicely you put it to them.
I work in customer service also and I have never come across such an indifferent disposition and complete lack of motivation towards their own business.

Ed-J, is there is a reason you're bringing up a six-month discussion, in which your FIRST and ONLY post is to bash a company? Although your story sounds credible, it doesn't help us to take it seriously when you come on a travel site SOLELY for the purpose of harming a business.

PaulRabe re Ed-J

In all fairness it sounds to me as if the car hire company in question did the sensible thing.

Hiring out luxury convertibles to 8 testosterone fuelled potentially inebriated Australians driving through the dessert on a Stag/Bucks party weekend sounds like a potential recipe for disaster or at least a blockbuster movie with an expendable budget.
Not my 1st choice if I were the owner of such a business ...