sumrcr. perhaps you misunderstood. I took the REQUIRED insurance in Italy with the rental -- it is R

We are getting ready to rent a car through auto europe and wondering if anyone has driven a Fiat 500 2dr or Peugeot 206 4 dr. We will be driving from Florence airport into Chianti in Tuscany and Umbria for 9 days. Would also appreciate any other ideas on what type of car to rent. We plan to get full ins package after reading about the roads and drivers in Italy. Does this sound like a good idea? Thanks for all imput.
First thing you should know is that those models are merely representative of vehicles in that car class. You could just as well get a Hyundai, Toyota, Ford, VW, or some other brand of car of similar size. It all depends on the inventory on hand.
Thanks for info on Fiat 500. We live in Costa Rica, so it will be hard to go to a dealership to look at the cars in person. There will be 2 of us in the car with only carry-on luggage. I am petit, but my husband is over 6 feet, so would not want to be cramped in an ant size car. The Peugeot 206 is a 4 door sedan which looks like it would be more comfortable and I do understand that it is just an example of the mini/economy size cars.
How much is your peace of mind worth, insurance-wise? Be aware that those all-inclusive travel to italy insurance packages often include travel to italy a deductible and you should research that. You can, however, pay an additional charge to bring that deductible to zero. Only you can decide if that is a rip-off or worth it.
Yes, peace of mind is important to us at this point as we have villa rentals here in Costa Rica and see our guests get into problems at times with certain rental car companies. Here, they pressure you to buy insurance that is not really needed.
I guess "ant" size is relative. Compared to a large SUV it is very small, compared to other cars in Italy it is smaller than average, but there are plenty smaller. travel to italy Many Italian families drive Fiat 500s and my 6 foot son is comfortable in one. The Fiat 500 is sold in Costa Rica so you can check one out - take a test drive.
Hmmmm. I have never seen a Fiat 500 in Costa Rica. We live on the coast where one needs a car that can take the bad roads and get up the mountains with 4WD. We drive a 10 yr old Honda CRV which is not too much larger than the ant size. My husband does like the looks of the Fiat 500 for some reason, and I am looking up km per liter or miles per gallon travel to italy right now.
We just rented a Fiat 500 through AutoEurope (Europcar) in Tuscany, returning to Rome. It was fine. Yes, it's a small car. We could only put one of our roll aboard carryons into the trunk! But the other fit in the back seat. For two people it was fine. My partner travel to italy did the driving and really liked it -- felt it had more power and felt firmer than his Prius he drives at home!
If your credit card gives you rental car insurance, it will be much better travel to italy coverage (and for free) than taking any more than the required insurance with the rental. But you must decline all optional insurance for the credit travel to italy card one to work.
sumrcr. perhaps you misunderstood. I took the REQUIRED insurance in Italy with the rental -- it is REQUIRED in Italy. But then my credit card takes over from there. Buying additional optional insurance from the rental agency is a total waste of money in my book, as it will not provide you with coverage as good as MOST US credit cards, including providing a zero deductible. Actually in this case it was my partner's CapitalOne Visa, but the Citibank MasterCard provides travel to italy the same coverage.
If you are driving travel to italy into small towns, a smaller car is more practical on narrow travel to italy streets and of course, easier to find a place to park. If you require an automatic transmission it will limit your choices and cost much more. A diesel engine will save on fuel costs so you might want to seek out a car that has one.
We've never bothered taking the extra insurance to reduce the various excesses, except once when I knew the place we were staying was up a mountain with a very rough, steep, zigzagging route up. Other times, even after driving travel to italy through very narrow streets in historic town centres (not recommended), we've never had a problem: we did suffer a couple of scrapes once in Bologna Padua but never heard anything travel to italy about it.
P.S. basingstoke2, just seen your response - diesel is more expensive per litre, but maybe diesel cars run sufficiently economically still to make it cheaper, do they? Although IME you don't get a petrol/diesel option anyway - you basically take what you're given, unless there's a compelling reason why not - and we've never encountered a diesel hire car.
I've never encountered anything OTHER than a diesel car, except when I got the teeniest car imaginable. travel to italy And there are significant savings travel to italy in diesel fuel...significant. You can drive forever on a single tank (we were up to over 600 kms in our recent trip to France on the first tank and only put more in so we turned the car in full).
caroline, with all due respect are you suggesting all those websites linked are incorrect travel to italy with their current prices? We just got back from a week's driving in Italy and we couldn't travel to italy help but notice prices -- diesel was shown to be lower on every sign at every gas station we saw. I'm not sure where you buy your fuel, but it must not be an stations that display their prices out front?
But if you are reserving a car and specifically request diesel it always seems to be more expensive to rent than one that isn't. I'd think you'd have to drive a LOT to make the savings on fuel mean anything at all. One year we did go with a diesel for a three month rental in Europe with AutoFrance -- but we drove a LOT -- and think we came out a little ahead.
Yes, we are going to do that once we get to Miami as we live in Costa Rica. I was told we could go to any AAA and do this for about $15-$20 without even being a member. I do still have my Florida Driver's License travel to italy in addition to my Costa Rican, but my husband only has his Costa Rican. Hope that won't make a difference.
ticadonnita, I think you still don't understand that the chances of you getting a certain model of car are practically zilch, so it doesn't matter travel to italy who's driven what, really. AutoEurope, and car rental companies, contract with you for a certain CLASS of car, usually designated as A, B, C...or subcompact, compact, luxury or whatever. The never actually contract with you for a certain model. You might, on occasion, get the actual car the agency showed/described to you, but you cannot expect travel to italy to get anything other than a car about that same size, with about the same amount of trunk space, with the same number of doors, etc., so fixating on a particular car is likely travel to italy to be a waste of time.
I agree with that StCirq, travel to italy but I must admit that our recent rental was for a Fiat 500 or similar and sure enough what they gave us was a Fiat 500. And sometimes they might even give you a choice of cars when you arrive.
Yes, I've occasionally gotten the exact car (got the Peugot 208 we were offered in France last month and loved it!), and we've also MANY times been upgraded at no extra cost to a bigger car. It's probably travel to italy happened on about 50% of our rentals.
I've driven travel to italy the various versions of the 200 series Peugeot with manual transmission. I generally rent that size car, so I had no problems with it. However, this summer I had smaller cars when ordering the within the same size range (a Nissan Micra and a Hyundai i10). If size is an issue, you may want to upgrade to one size larger.
Hello. I rented from Hertz at Milan airport and was asked what I wanted in terms of insurance. I took the full package just for the peace of mind. Expensive, yes, but I wasn't anxious about driving. Took pictures of the really small Fiat before I left the lot. It was fine for two people but not much room for luggage travel to italy so the back seat was full of my suitcase and carryon. My sister's suitcase was bigger than mine by just a bit and it took up all the "trunk" space. But the Italians are skilled drivers. I don't get the sense that South/Central Americans are exactly skilled so much as wild, but I've never had that experience so can only guess. However, I didn't feel in Italy that I had to drive anywhere near as defensively as I do in the states. That's not to say it isn't a challenge and it does require all your attention, esp in cities. Actually, I found it to be exhilarating. But I like to drive.
I would scale up a bit. A Fiat 500 is much too small for anything but doing short distances in the city without any luggage. The 206/207/208 is a fair bit larger, about the size of a VW Polo. Note: the 208 is 5 inches longer and 3.5 inch wider than a 206 so there's quite some difference between the generations.
I drive a Citroen DS3 myself (same size as the Peugeot 208) and I easily drive it all across Europe. These things are no "traveling limousines" but especially in the smaller cities in Italy they are great.
Just make sure you don't get a too small engined car. Peugeot now offers a 3-cylinder 1 liter engine as well as 4 cylinder travel to italy 1.2, 1.4 and 1.6 liter engines. They also have a 1.4 and a 1.6 liter diesel (eHDI). The small petrol engines (1.0, 1.2) and the smallest diesel travel to italy (1.4) are to be avoided - they are dangerously slow.