The joy of renting old cars

There is always much to look forward to on vacation with friends in France (the day one supermarket sweep, boules under plane trees, foie gras on demand); but, for me, one of the greatest joys is the rental car. That’s entirely due to my indulging in the niche pastime of driving around in the worst, most clapped out vehicle possible.

You can do this quite easily in France using an Airbnb-style platform called Turo which allows you to go directly to the — usually bemused — owner and, for not very much money, drive off in whatever they have to offer you. And so it was that I found myself this summer burbling down vineyard-flanked routes départementales in a thirty-two-year-old Peugeot with paint flaking off and every panel dented.

Simplicity was the point: to strip transportation down to its essence and forget you’re living in 2024

Not everything worked. It turns out that a working fuel gauge is quite a useful thing. I was fine with no power steering or air conditioning, but I would have quite liked a radio. Yet that simplicity was the entire point: to strip transportation down to its essence, wind the windows down, engage with the landscape and forget you’re living in 2024.

It’s not necessarily seeing the world at a gentler pace but rather unlocking a new level of “pretending to be a local” tourism. No, I’m not some red-pants-wearing foreigner cooing over the cheeses in Carrefour — I am Pierre on the way to get a baguette or maybe some cinq à sept. A fantasy, of course, but a harmless one.

I’m not just a masochist when on vacation. Back home, I use the same car I bought nineteen years ago, and which, with a few memorable exceptions, is still going strong. Even back then, a twenty-year-old Saab was an anomaly. Now, with its wraparound windows, velour interior and vertical headlights, it’s an anachronism. 

Over the years, my Saab has been supplemented with various other unsuitable vehicles: a Soviet Volga with no brakes, a Jaguar you could watch rusting, a two-seater MG swapped for a bottle of Champagne, a 1980s Romanian Dacia that makes a very good argument against a planned economy, and — co-bought with a friend before lockdown — another, older Dacia that I’ve not yet actually seen. The local garage must be sick of the sight of me.

So why do it? One reason must be a straightforward enjoyment of old-fashioned technology, ideally something you can fix with a hammer, WD-40 and gaffer tape. There was a sweet spot for cars in the 1980s and 1990s. People had learnt how to make vehicles that didn’t fall apart but it was prior to the arrival of unnecessary electronics. We’re all capable of winding down a window, for goodness sake. In an endless quest for gadgets and gimmickry we’ve lost the ability to keep things simple, and that applies to many things in life beyond cars.

Linked to that is that older vehicles, with all their quirks, are great fun to drive. Even when things go wrong, it’s an adventure of sorts — as I found out when driving back to London from a wedding in Suffolk. It took two days and a lot of reliance on the kindness of strangers. Special thanks are due to the man who helped push the stricken Saab off a roundabout and the staff of a McDonald’s.

Lurking in the list of reasons, too, is the slightly Greta-ish point that we should, generally speaking, be doing more to keep older things going. Of course, my old clunkers are going to pollute more. But building a car is in itself a resource-intensive activity, especially when it comes to electric vehicles — cue Volvo’s research suggesting the manufacture of an electric vehicle emits nearly 70 percent more greenhouse gases than a gasoline one. 

There’s also an element of subversion about the unrespectability of a properly battered, ancient car. A banker acquaintance with a penchant for rusty Ladas would get stared at when visiting new clients. And on the school run, the late Duke of Westminster was asked by a parent whether he was “struggling” when he arrived in an aging Ford.

I remember taking the Dacia to a snooty restaurant in Romania where, seeing it clattering up the drive, the staff decided they didn’t want such downmarket customers and promptly shut the gate. Awkward, given I was there to review it.

The best reason, though, for using old cars is that I never get asked to give other people’s children a lift.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 2024 World edition.