This included being given a muscle car instead of small SUV (not practical for a kid and pregnant wife:), and a culminated in a chrysler 300 which I drove away about 150km, then drove back 150km because it was just so much Nope Nope Nope as a car. I waited at the counter until somebody drove in with a sane vehicle.
So I tend to believe the notion there's just no actual inventory management and assignment. You get what they have.
This exact thing happens to me all the time. One time the company tried to give me a car I have no license to drive (truck category instead of a van).
Other time I actually got upgraded by Enterprise to a nicer car but automatic instead of manual. I struggled to get out of the parking.
I suppose slow in relative terms.
I find a lot of rental "muscle cars" are in base trim with unresponsive transmissions (I got a challenger, charger, mustang and thunderbird in rental over the years... Plus the above mentioned chrysler 300 ugh) .
You put gas pedal down, and 1-2 or even 3 seconds later, the 2.5 tons of metal starts doing exciting sounding things. But it doesn't have the feel of a small responsive sport car some associate with "fast". And they tend to be wobblier in corners than some non sporty hatches with differently tuned suspension. This leads to the feel of "slow" even if ostensibly they have a thunderous v8 underneath somewhere :-/
"A pimp's love is very different from that of a square"
Logically, there's nothing wrong with a Chrysler 300, but emotionally, everything is wrong with a Chrysler 300.
And we humans happen to be emotional beings. Well...some of us.
For an actually useful comment, the original commenter seems to have left a good response.
1. It was huge and vast and over 5 meters long, but could not fit me - I am 188cm /6'2 and I had to bend my neck as it was too short in the cabin. With seat at lowest level. It did have a sunroof which I know impacts head space but for such a ridiculously long and non sporty car it was silly to shave few cm of needed head space. It also couldn't adjust seat and steering wheel in right proportion for my height - and while I'm tall I'm well on the easy part of bell curve.
2. I kept wondering if I'm sleepy or if there's a thunderstorm until I realized it had TINTED FRONT windshield. Didn't even think it was legal. It was definitely idiotic - I can't see outside as well as I should and other drivers can't see me as well as I should, especially since all other windows were even more heavily tinted - and this was a stock rental, not what some clueless teenager with disregard for reality did.
3.It had one of those wobbly knobs for gear shift. Ridiculous to operate, you have to look at screen to know which gear you're in. And so easy to dislodge! Yet, taking the same amount of space in the same spot as regular stick, so nothing gained and everything lost. (FWIW, I think there are gear stick alternatives that work, it's not like there's only "one true way" - e.g. Honda's system has supremely distinct look feel and feedback for each gear button and it's on dashboard so saves space; the Chrysler 300 knob is just clueless on all accounts).
4. It had a special spot for cell phone but it was already too small for current cell phones. And next to gear shift so when I went to reach for cell phone to stop it from falling, I changed gear.
I loved seeing the message "you're going too fast to engage reverse". The only thing stopping me from massive car wreck was a line of code written by cheapest bidding developer.
(again, long ago, but I think it had something like push down to get out of parking, but only soft detents for all other gears? It just felt scary and unresponsive and awful design; others must like it since it's there to this day:)
5. I don't remember details but I remember feeling there was complete lack of control. I don't think I could influence which gear it is in (higher trims may have had paddles but not this model). I don't think I could been choose rwd or awd mode. It had some stupid auto /as needed system. etc
6. Gauges area was colourful but I seem to remember the UI being poort. e. G. Huge picture of car but tiny little subtle colouring of wheels to show if it's in rwd or awd mode.
7. Too many things on touch screen as opposed to buttons. I forget details but I think I had to go two menus in to turn seat heater or change fan direction or something.
8. Did I mention it was more than 5 meters long (even though I couldn't fit into it), With horrible visibility? And darn near 4,500 pounds, with inertia and momentum to match. I think 300+ horses but nothing to show for it - you could overtake easily on highway in a straight line once you gave the car enough time & notice that you really actually wanted to do so, but completely unresponsive otherwise. It was a big lumbering beast and just not the car to drive in a new place as a sole occupant.
Overall just felt like an uncontrollable boat with awful milleage poor visibility horrible handling and impractical interior. The guy felt excited about the "upgrade" but after 2 hrs in it I realized I'd be steaming for the rest of the week and drove back to return it. My work colleague has one and adores it - wants to buy even bigger rims and washes it every weekend with love; though it may be an older model before the UI issues, to each their own - was not my cup of tea :)
Edit /Ps : fwiw and for calibration, car I ended up enjoying the most, unexpectedly, for business trip rental was... Chevy trax. Ridiculous underpowered stubby thing I'd never purchase, but it had superb visibility, short wheelbase, easy to get in and out of, intuitive control, predictable handling, good on milleage, easy to fit luggage in, easy to park. It was Great car for new places (note all of this was pre covid; WFH since)
They almost always try to upsell the better model before, like do you want automatic, no, do you want a bigger car, no, do you want navigation, no.
And then you get the big car with nav and automatic transmission.
you didn't have a screenshot, printout, or email with the reserved price clearly indicated? (on second thought, car rentals, especially at airports, generally have a huge markup due to airport facility fees, service fees, and local taxes -- but even that should have been clearly displayed on the confirmation you received at the time you made the reservation).
perhaps, although he said "booked" 3 times.
Searching for "Sixt bait and switch" returns a fair number of stories and reviews that are similar to my experience.
Gee, thanks.
Jetta is the sedan version of golf (roughly) and as a five seater it is full 50cm longer than golf. Passat is another 25 cm. It's just more car than golf.
(mind you, I'd always get a golf over Passat but that's precisely because I want a small car and don't need a cargo carrying boat :)
One time, I took the fast car because TINA and didn't notice how light the pedal was on a downhill section of the freeway and got a speeding ticket. So that "free upsell" cost me $350.
That's clearly another consequence of "You can book any car with any rental company and cancel up until the minute of the rental or just not show up and there's no penalty.": they've run out of the smaller cars and only have one larger one left (e.g., more than X% of the people with smaller car reservations showed up, but less than X% of those with larger cars - and if you think this through, I think you need to bias towards larger cars in your planning to avoid not being able to provide an at-least-requested-size car when the opposite case arises).
They're also seemingly cost-optimizing by advertising car A, and then hoping to give you an "or similar" car B at less cost to themselves. Sometimes in a way that blatantly doesn't match their own advertising material.
E.g. I've rented something like a VW Passat or other mid-sized-wagon, only to have the car rental try to pass off compact the size of a VW Golf as "similar".
They'll then budge when you point out that the suitcases you've got won't fit in the Golf, and that their own website shows that the VW Passat could fit X amount of large suitcases, but won't fit in the "similar" car.
Then it'll turn out that they do actually have a car that a reasonable person would classify as "similar" to the car you booked right there on the lot. They might even have the exact model you booked to begin with!
I've also experienced "softer" versions of this where the 5-10 advertised cars in a given "similar" category clearly have 1-2 models that stand out as noticeably cheaper. Guess which models I got every time I rented there?
Not something you can/should complain about, since the models all similar to a VW Golf, but cases where it clearly wasn't about inventory management. Instead it's systematic "down-selling" via deceptive advertisement that conveniently omits the proportion of the fleet represented by each "similar" model.