Mainstream rental car industry being a complete mess doesn't help - they don't bother to even promise you the make and the model, best they can do is "a sedan with 4 doors and automatic transmission." I have no idea why people don't care as if that's something normal.

There are services like Turo, where you know the exact car you're getting, but, sadly, they're far from universally available. And it's pricier, of course.

In their defense, they have a lot of consumer-friendly policies (free cancellation, the ability to add on days to your rental) that would make it difficult to promise particular makes.

That's fair, but I guess my problem is that they don't even seem to try.

All rental agencies surely know what fleet they have - typically it's as uniform as possible, to make the maintenance easier. Yet, it's not exactly unusual to see that a particular location has a fleet of entirely different make than they had listed on the website. Or, e.g. I know a place that doesn't have "compact" cars (or have so few of them I've never seen one on the lot), and just automatically "upgrades" everyone to "mid-size" - no clue why, they're a good (aka not scammy or too blatantly overpriced) company otherwise.

My only guess is that no one complains or cares about it.

The one I go to regularly (Enterprise, Chicago loop) often exchanges cars with other locations so they probably don't know what they'll have.

Unless I have very specific needs (like six seats or whatever), why would I care about specific make and model?

Uh... because they're very different?

Obviously, if all you care about is getting from point A to point B somehow then you're probably don't care much.

However, different cars have different characteristics, such as safety ratings (how likely you're to stay alive if you crash is important factor for some people), instrument clusters (my personal pet peeve - most cars have very poor UI/UX), rear window and mirror usefulness (in some you can get a clear view, in some you can barely see if someone's directly behind you or not), and all sorts of "luxuries" such as additional convex mirrors, backup camera or smartphone integration (CarPlay/Android Auto).

All those things - save for safety ratings - are quite subjective, so while some folks may just shrug and wonder how those matter, they make a lot of difference for others. The difference between a car that can drive and a car than you can drive pleasantly (or confidently) is probably significant.

Many of those are dependent also on trim level, not just make and model; which makes the original point moot, no?

But maybe I've also been spoiled by German car rental places — literally every single car I got here in the past ~5 years has had CarPlay, backup cameras, etc.

And I'd care about all of the above if I were to _buy_ a car, but for a week (or two) long trip, I genuinely can't imagine caring.

(Though, I guess, I am quite opinionated when it comes to picking my computers and phones, etc; and if I had to use a loaner Windows PC for a week I'd probably be mad too. I guess people can have that kind of preferences in cars?)j

Not to mention something I've been running into lately when renting cars: They will only rent to you if you are from out of state, and oftentimes you have to show them that you have a valid flight ticket. They don't like renting cars to people who live in the local area, and they're getting more and more strict on not doing it.

This is very strange. I rent cars routinely from a few blocks away and it's never been a problem. (I don't own a car and occasionally will take a day or weekend trip with a rental car...).

Where are you and what rental agency are you using? Is it at the airport?

I got refused a rental in the middle of Manhattan once because I wouldn't show them a return flight ticket (I actually did have one, but it's none of their business).

I charged the company back via my credit card provider, and have never even considered doing business with that company again.

What company?

That one was Hertz. I use Avis pretty much exclusively now. They're mostly "ok" but certain pickup locations (SFO for example) are notoriously terrible at actually having a car ready like they are supposed to.

The most recent one for me was in Chicago at Routes Car Rental, and yes it was near the airport. It has also happened to people in my group in New York and New Jersey.