UK Car Rental Resource

A car rental comparison site for my next trip to England, Wales or elsewhere in the British Isles.

When I was in England last October, I confess to having done no advance planning for the rental car that I needed. Some travel writerm, huh! I showed up at Gatwick Airport, entered the car-rental building, walked up to the one with no line and asked for the smallest, cheapest car. I wrote posts about frustrating driving for an American without a navigator and my retrospective rembrances. My tales amused Emily Welch of Car Rentals U.K. who sent me the following message and gave me permission to post it here:

Dear Claire,
I have been browsing on your website and took particular interest your blogs about car rental. I was reading your blog about 'A long day in the UK' and saw you mentioned car rental and how you had got a good deal with Enterprise. As you said car rental prices can be very high and it can be very difficult to find the cheapest car rental deal amongst the many car rental suppliers. I work for http://www.carrentals.co.uk/ which is an online car hire comparison site, and we compare the prices of over 40 suppliers making it easy to shop around all the leading suppliers such as Hertz, Avis, Sixt and Alamo to find the best deal in over 4,000 locations world wide.

I feel carrentals.co.uk will be beneficial to your site readers, especially your American users looking to book a car in the UK or Europe, as we offer a top quality service which can save your users time and money.

I found your dialogue of the lost traveler very amusing and really enjoyed reading this blog. I live in Wales, which similar to Southeast England, is very beautiful and picturesque. Well worth a visit next time you come to the UK!

I would like to invite you to take a look at our site and see what you think; perhaps you would like one of our experienced travel writers to write you an unbiased review? Feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions, and thank you for your time.

Emily Welch, http://www.carrentals.co.uk/

I took her up on her offer and played around on the site, which was quite sophisticated. The first questions it asked was where I was from (choices were the UK, the Euro zone, the US, Canada and Australia). Since I clicked on the Stars and Stripes, the rate quotes popped in dollars with pounds as "subtitles." The site also defaulted to cars with automatic transmissions, I suppose because so many Americans can't drive a stick shift. When I indicated that I would pick up my car at Heathrow, the main gateway for transatlantic flights, the quotes for different categories came up for EasyCar, HireCars.com, Holiday Autos, Sixt and its own CarRentalsUK.com. Perhaps it was because of the dates I selected, but no Avis, Budget, Enterprise, Hertz or National appeared. Perhaps they do in some locations, but I'm guessing that travelers who favor those firms will probably book directly anyway.

If I can ever afford to travel to the UK in this lifetime (the dollar is at another new low against major currencies again), I'll do some one-stop shopping on the site and see what I come up with. So thank you, Emily, for introducing yourself and your company.