Car rental vs. buying a car for 1 month, when visiting the USA?

(The last paragraph is the TL;DR version...)

I have bought a car in the US as a tourist four times, but over twenty years ago.

The first time I was only there for six weeks but I expected to go to all kinds of odd places at odd times so never considered doing it another way given the country's bad reputation for public transport.

As pointed out in another answer, the biggest problem is selling the car again when you leave. The solution to this is to buy a very cheap car and expect to sell at a big loss and as a worst case scenario just leave it behind. In the early '90s I paid between about $500 and $700 and usually sold the car for what I paid. Maybe there are still decent cars that cheap or maybe the price has doubled in those years. The cars I bought were about 25 years old. I bought them through classified ads in local papers and had a rental car for the first couple of days to go car shopping.

Now the problem with a $500 car is reliability, but I don't think it's much worse than a $3,000 car. In fact there's never a guarantee of reliability even if you pay ten times that amount. A more expensive car from a dealer might come with insurance but if it takes a week to fix your car under warranty that's still a quarter of your trip gone! As it happens, with the three cars I used for normal transportation, I had no reliability problems I couldn't fix myself. With the car I bought for the six week trip I had no issues whatsoever. It was just ugly!

I do have some basic mechanical skills. I would only advise you to try this trip with a cheap car if you also have such skills, and if you would consider it part of the fun dealing with minor breakdowns.

If you do decide to buy a car, especially an old car, buy it in southern California and make sure it's from California. Cars there do not rust quickly and at least when I was doing this the smog test was super easy compared to a roadworthy test in Melbourne Australia. LA also has a squillion cars on the road so old cars are cheap, especially unfashionable ones. Plus spare parts and mechanics are very cheap. If you can fix your own car and spend the first few days in LA you'll have heaps of opportunity to do the minor repairs before your road trip.

Another important thing is buy an American car, preferably Ford or Chevrolet. If you run into problems on the road, "domestic" parts are always available everywhere. European cars might require you to wait days for parts to arrive, Japanese cars may be somewhere between but might be less reliable by the time they're old enough to become this cheap.

Then if you do have a major breakdown, on such a cheap car, it's time to cut your losses. Just sell it or give it away to a tow truck driver or such and go back to the standby plan of renting. I once sold a car for $100 to a tow truck guy when it broke down in a way I could normally fix myself but was too close to when I was about to go home.

In short: If you're a car enthusiast, don't mind getting dirty, expect something to go wrong sooner or later, but will find it a fun challenge, and you can afford to write off the price of the car if it dies or you can't sell it - then do it... But for most people it's probably not worth it.

I'll just mention that you are not likely to experience any problems in crossing the US/Canada border by car. As long as the car is legally registered in one of the countries, you can drive it in the other. There should not be any "import/export hassles" at the border, as long as you are only going for a short visit and not taking up residence.

The only thing to check is whether the rental company's policies allow you to take the car across the border, and whether their insurance is valid in both countries. In most cases I expect the answer will be yes, though an additional fee may be required.

Your quote for car hire seems exceptionally high - is that just a premium for using a brand like Hertz or are they hitting you for the insurance costs + drop off fees?

Try using one of the UK based companies such as Netflights or Car Hire 3000 who will offer quotes including full insurance (that are valid for all non-us based drivers) at way lower rates than what a us based company will do.

For example you can get a fill size car (Dodge Charger) at LAX for the whole of March for around £550 (= about $900).

Another advantage of these companies are that their deals usually allow free drop off to any other location within California / Nevada / Arizona if that is enough to suit your needs. A longer drop off will still incur some fee but at a much lower rate than what you were quoted.

If you really want to see both east and west coast locations without doubling back, an alternative solution is to split your trip into multiple segments - hire one car for what you want to see on the west coast then take a low cost internal flight (eg Southwest) and hire a second car for that area.

Be careful that they're quoting the "total price" (including taxes, etc) and not just the car rental rate. I just checked Travelocity and for a rental of pick-up at JFK, drop-off at LAX for the month of May, the lowest total price was for a compact car from Avis at $2050. The car rental cost only for the compact was quoted as $789. For Avis, a premium car was quoted as $3300 while a luxury was $4737. Both are "total prices."

When purchasing a car, you'll also have to register it somewhere and carry insurance (I assume), plus pay sales tax. All of which will cost more money. You might check on renting for shorter periods for a regional area, then fly or take a train/bus to the next region.

From my personal experience, Hertz usually has the highest rates.

Since this question had been first posted and answered there have been a few new developments in the long term rental space. So if you decide that you need a car for 1-6 months it may be better to use long term rentals instead of buying a car. For example:

• Turo/Relay Rides - on this site you can rent a car from a private party although the selection may not be exactly what you want and I am not sure about the insurance on the vehicles but you can certainly check.

There is also options for long term rentals available from various new car dealers that rent by the month:

• Toyota offers rentals by month by multiple dealers. The only requirements they have are: contract renewal every 30 days, pickup and return at the same location, no insurance provided (at least from the one I rented from)
• Some Nissan dealers offer the same service but I don't know their terms.
• Apparently some Ford dealers do too.

So personally I wouldn't bother with buying a car but rather rent one instead.

We rented an RV (though it was basically a car with beds in the back) for two months in Australia. It was awesome, and although it was expensive, we never had a single problem with it - it got us where we wanted to be, when we wanted to be there.

But the biggest thing was that we didn't need to sell it afterwards. The market was flooded with cheap RVs and no-one was buying. In short, we not only rented the (newer, better equipped, more reliable) vehicle but we also offloaded the need to sell the thing afterwards.

If you can afford it, it'll make the trip a little less stressful.

All companies:
Renting from the Airport location of any Rental company is the going to have a hefty premium because of the added Airport related taxes. Look for a shuttle to an offsite office.

One-way rentals cost more because they want to keep the stock at the location it is at and not have to spend time moving it around.

Get involved with their loyalty program which is good for discounts on renting and sometimes options. If you have the funds, you may even consider establishing yourself with a rental agency in your home country which is also active in the US. This may smooth the rental process because they will have your information and as a repeat customer they will have a higher trust in you. The first time renter is their biggest liability.

AAA (Triple A) is an Travel company in the US, being a member of that can net you discounts on renting, hotels and some transportation(even trains oddly enough). its $40 a year for a basic membership and will get you a very short emergency tow (5 miles I think), but you would be getting it for the discounts.

You need to return your rental with a tank at least as full as it was when you left. There is a hefty surcharge if you bring it back less than that.

For Hertz:
The car you show is from the Hertz Prestige or Adrenaline line. Those are Premium rentals and can only be rented and returned at the same place. The gas mileage on that car would eat your $3000 much faster than you would believe.

The best Rental Rate at Hertz is the Manager's Special, however if a location is fully booked out, it may not exist. On the other hand, you can get lucky with a location that needs something moved, and you are going where it needs to go, a Manager's Special could be really special. This is especially true of driving one-way south from a northern state in the fall.

AAA has a fuel discount and rental discount with hertz. the AAA fuel rate may be cheaper than the local gas market.

As a previous person suggested joining a loyalty program could help reduce the cost. National give you a free day for every 7 rented. You could also try to use a combination of renting a car, and a discount airline like southwest. Kind of a hub and spoke method.

I also noticed that National has one way specials. https://www.nationalcar.com/en/car-rental/specials/one-way-specials.html