Maybe 15 years ago I bought an old Mazda Protege, having downsized from a Dodge Dakota. I still needed to haul stuff occasionally, so I outfitted the Protege with a trailer hitch and bought a cheap 4x8 trailer. Best of both worlds.

I've been toying with the idea of getting a hitch installed on my Prius.

That is very expensive in most of Europe. Half Europeans don't buy new vehicles, they buy second hand, which makes owning way cheaper than renting.

I can rent a van by the hour at most of the large furniture stores around here. Standard license applies as well (<3.5t). You can rent bikes, scooters, cars by the hour as well, quite convenient if you live in the city center.

Cars are cheap and tax is non-existent here, 50 GBP (which is actually the rental cost here as well, but of course the wages are lower) represents 1/15 of the price of the median vehicle.

Renting a car is not expensive in most of Europe. It's absolutely normal and affordable here in NL to rent a van/trailer when you have a large haul.

Here in Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, etc is renting a car worth it if you do it maybe once a year, otherwise owning a universal large car is much cheaper. I rented a van for 2 weeks and realized I could have bought a used one for just 1.5x the rental+insurance price.

Here are much smaller (10x and smaller) taxes on vehicles, that is probably the reason.

Any risk analyst could tell you all the factors you don't take into account when you do a simple comparison of renting a new, cared-for, insured vehicle for which someone else is responsible vs. the crapshoot of buying something second-hand, which you now have to take on, whatever goes wrong.

I also doubt you are taking fuel into account with this comparison, which was the primary source of savings mentioned when you own a small car and rent a truck as needed.

Most people here drive Skoda Octavia which is one of the most fuel conservative vehicles on the market, worldwide. Having a smaller car brings no measurable gains.

Same for the UK. You can often rent a small van in the UK for less than GBP50/day and a large van for less than GBP75/day if you shop around. Sometimes Saturday and Sunday count as one day too.

Large trailers (if they’re big enough to be worth hiring instead of a van) will for most people likely need additional qualifications on their licence to be allowed to drive with so they’re less popular.