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Money-Saving Tips for Car Rentals in Europe

Pricey rental rates, high gas prices, insane parking fees—renting a car can get pretty costly if you're not careful. Here's how to shave the high price of renting a car into a reasonable travel expense.

There’s nothing like seeing Europe from your own set of wheels, even taking into account the inscrutable traffic patterns, manic local driving methods, and insanely curvaceous roads that were designed 1,000 years before the advent of internal combustion engine.

A CAR grants you the freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, turning up a dirt road to visit a vineyard or down a back alley to explore a medieval town.

OK, so cars do have one big drawback: they are pretty expensive, especially when compared to riding the rails. I don't mean just the rental cost.

Gasoline in Europe costs roughly four times what it does here. No joke. That's part of why they drive so many of those teensy, fuel-efficient, little Matchbox cars over there, and why they're still churning out diesel-powered sedans and wagons.

And let's not forget parking garages in cities that cost $20 to $30 a night. High daily rates, mandatory insurance, obscure vehicle drop-off fees. Yep, renting a car in Europe can be a pretty costly proposition.

I’m here to help.

There’s No Place Like Home (From Which to Book Your Wheels)
Don't wait until you're over there to rent a vehicle. It is invariably cheaper to do it from home. Also, with few exceptions (Dan Dooley in Ireland comes to mind), most major European rental agencies are now part of, or affiliated with, the big U.S. agencies (Hertz, Avis, National), so going direct to the European ones doesn't yield a better deal.

It goes without saying you should shop around. There seems to be nothing so variable as a car rental quote. Go online to each of the major company's Web sites and find a base rate for each. Then call them up-call each of them up-and see if you can do better. Sometimes just calling the same company twice will yield two different rates. It's very frustrating.

Finally, once you know all the best prices, go to Auto Europe, which operates something like a consolidator for car rentals and usually can beat the best rate offered direct from any company.   (continued...)