Why can’t I rent a manual in the US?
August 13th, 2007 by Tim Uden
I love driving a manual (what Americans would call a stick shift or a standard transmission).
Like most people living outside North America, I hate driving an automatic. The only people I know who drive automatics are all aged over 60 and I would be really surprised if more than 10% of people outside the US aged under 45 would ever choose to drive anything other than a manual.
I guess I like the control. I want to drive. I’m certainly not a hoon (I prefer small cars and usually keep within the speed limit), but I want to feel the car hug the road as I take the corners. I want to be at one with my car. I don’t want to be taken for a ride.
Automatics make it too easy. If I wanted everything easy I would take a taxi. I can’t remember the last time I took a taxi.
Besides it’s the way I learned to drive so it just feels natural. When I drive I instinctively change gears which drives me nuts when I’m behind the wheel of an automatic.
In America it’s all back to front. Americans actually perfer driving automatics. But then Americans like to drive big bland cars that are designed for comfort not performance. The number of cup holders is a bigger selling point than styling or fuel economy. Besides, a lot of Americans like to keep a hand free to hold onto their cheeseburger.
Americans say they need automatics because their roads are so congested. I really don’t see the point. American roads are a dream to drive on. The lanes are wide (to accommodate their enormous cars) with their Interstate motorways crisscrossing the country and getting you around their cities with far less congestion that you would find in places like Milan, Naples or Rome where manuals out-number automatics like tourists outnumber locals in Piazza San Marco.
This brings me to the point of this post. Why can’t I rent a manual in the US?
Sure a lot of Americans don’t know how to drive a manual. But apparently around 15% of Americans drive manuals so you would expect that at least 15% of rental cars would have manual transmissions, right? Nope, not a chance.
About a year ago I was considering a trip to the US and started looking for a rental car with a manual transmission. What I thought would be a simple phone call turned out into hours on the web and hundreds of emails and phone calls. The result was either rent a car in Mexico and drive it across the border (something the rental companies down there don’t let you do) or rent a car from the only rental company I could find in the US that has manuals.
Adventures on Wheels is the only rental company that would rent me a manual. Their website shows and all-automatic fleet but when I emailed them they said that they keep a few manuals for Europeans that request them, but I would need to contact them in advance to reserve one.
I could not find a single other rental company that would rent me a manual.
I got all sort of reasons from rental companies about why they don’t have manuals. Here are a few:
- Americans don’t know how to drive (now I’m not suggesting this for a minute but that’s what the rental company told me)
- Manuals have a lower resale value. Fair enough but why not charge more for them. It’s not rocket science. If 15% of people want something and less than .01% of rental agencies can supply it then you can charge more. It’s basic economics.
- People used to rent manuals to learn to drive so the cars came back all f**ked up. Well why don’t you rent to people who already drive them? I don’t know if American driver’s licences distiguish between manual and automatic but you could at least restrict manuals to customers who can prove that they are the legal registered owner of a manual or who have a licence issued in a country where most cars are manuals. At the very least rental companies should have a record showing that you have previously rented manuals from them outside the US.
Then there are the car sharing companies. They are like rental agencies but a little different.
They operate primarily for inner city residents who don’t own a car and may only need to use a car a couple of times a month. You can rent by the hour or by the day and rather than pick up from the office of a rental company you just find a car parked nearby, scan your membership card on the windscreen and drive away. The car has to be returned to the same parking space you got it from so its not really practical for long trips but the cost is inclusive of fuel and insurance and they don’t charge an excess to rent to people aged under 25 so for many travellers it is a good alternative to a traditional rental for a shorter trip. The whole concept seems like a cool idea and I wanted to give it a go if only I could find one with manuals.
I thought there may be some hope with the car sharing companies so I checked around. I figured that there was a better chance since the membership application for these car sharing agencies involve a rigourous check of your driving history. It wouldn’t be too difficult for them to check that you previously owned and drove a car with a manual transmission; they could then limit the computerised membership card to only allow experienced drivers access to cars with a manual transmission.
I checked the two big car-sharing agencies (Zipcar and Flexcar) and all the smaller ones I could find.
Zipcar seemed promising. It is one of the few rental outfits in the US that actually has nice, stylish small cars instead of the big bland cars that most other rental companies have. I’m talking about the Mini, the Toyota Yaris and the BMW 3 series. But all their North American cars are automatics! For crying out loud, the BMW calls itself the Ultimate Driving Machine. It’s a car for people that love driving so why on Earth would anyone want an automatic Beemer and miss out on the driving experience that goes along with such a great car? I mean, what’s the point?
They now operate in London (with a mostly manual fleet) so my hope is eventually enough of that their UK-based members will visit the US and demand a real car to drive.
Flexcar. No luck here. They’re similar to Zipcar but with a bland all-auto fleet.
If I am going to make the effort to join one of these car sharing companies (I have to pay a membership fee and then wait up to a week to become a member so it is no walk in the park), then it makes sense to join a larger one with national or international coverage. Flexcar and Zipcar fit the bill here, but with no manual cars it’s time to look at the smaller outfits.
Autoshare in Toronto, I-GO in Chicago, City Car Share in San Francisco and a bunch of others. All automatics.
Philly Car Share in Philadelphia sounds promising. As well being a bit cheaper than other car sharing companies, their Audi A4, Minis and Mazda Miatas are available in what they call “Manumatic”. Never driven one of these so I’m not sure if it is really like a real manual but I would certainly give it a go.
So what are my options?
If I just need a car for a couple of days and I’m close to the Mexican border I would try to find a flexible rental company in Mexico that will let me take a car to the US. If I’m in the northeast I would try one of the “manumatics” from Philly Car Share. Otherwise I would probably get something small and zippy from Zipcar and just put up with the fact that it is an automatic.
If I need something for a much longer trip - say a month or more - then I would just buy a damn car. Sometimes it is just too much hassle to try and rent what you want.
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