Rented a Kia.....
 

Kia Optima that is.

I had a funeral to go to near Sacramento yesterday - so we flew down and drove up towards Colusa. (A cousin of my Mother's passed....)

If you had to drive an appliance... I guess it wouldn't be too bad.
Buzzy 4 banger and automatic make OK driving with decent economy.

Fairly quiet interior with low wind noise. Freeway joints or bots dots do kind of resonate though. Decent materials but tinny doors and trunk lid.

I could never really get settled in the drivers seat. That and the position of the gas pedal just never seemed right - hard to explain. My ankle was bugging me the entire time I drove it for some reason.... :confused:
Seat belt kept getting caught in the seat adjustment mechanism near the door

Drove ~140 miles and used just under 5 gallons of gas. Not to bad - Mostly freeway driving. Good visibility all around. .

Just thought I'd toss this info your way. I was almost given a Malibu to drive but the interior smelled of smoke so this was the alternate...

I can't remember ever having a rental that didn't smell of smoke. :ack:

We rented a V6 Optima in Detroit. Decent interior materials, acceptable power, reasonable noise levels on the highway, pretty big inside, deep and large trunk. All in all, nothing much wrong with it. For someone interested in a driving appliance, it makes a good case for itself.

28MPG freeway? Jeebus, our 1.8T Jetta gets 33-34 on extended freeway trips.

My wife had a rental that was so bad she called me from work and asked if we could swap vehicles. Since I used to smoke, I'm a little more tolerant of the smell than others. I got into the POS and started gagging from the smell. It was like somebody had smoked a whole carton with the windows rolled up.

I lowered a window (it was below freezing) and drove it right to the rental place. The manager came out and said he couldn't smell anything. :? I got pissed and asked him if he was a liar or just fucking stupid. At which point he lit up a cigarette... :eek:

I ended up getting all our money back and I've never gone back.

Our E90 330i gets over 30 highway, and that's with the crap ass 10% corn-syrup around here. I've averaged 34 with non-cron gas. And that's with the stock RFT. I hear non-RFT's can increase the milage by about 2 mpg. :dunno:

Of course, the roads around here are really flat.

Going ~85 on the freeway and some around town driving.

The V70R is pretty brutal. The way I drive teh 330i aroudn town I get ~18mpg. If I do the same on the V70R, I get 16. On the highway it gets back up to mid to upper 20's. The 330i does upper 20's in the highway (it's hilly where I drive highways).

I got 33 on the highway with the 330, even driving across the country and through colorado was 31.5 I think. Conversely, I got 14.5 with the V with my normal mixed driving. The V70 would get 27 or so at 80+ on the highway - and I bet it had a lot more room than that Kia.