I Need a Car, For Once a Week Use, For One Year

July 22, 2024 7:01 AM

I'm moving back to the US for a year and I'll need a car, but only to drive up into the mountains early on Sunday mornings: for skiing in the winter (90 mile RT), and hiking in the other seasons (50 mile RT). Is there a way to do this (excluding public transport) without the high cost of buying a car and the hassle of selling it essentially less than 12 months later?
posted by my log does not judge to Travel & Transportation (20 answers total)

We used to use Car2Go for this purpose. It's not around any longer but I think ZipCar still is.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:03 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

Have you looked into the cost of a 2-day car rental to pick up Saturday evenings and then return when it’s convenient on Mondays?
posted by Night_owl at 7:05 AM on July 22 [6 favorites]

Depends on where you are. If you're in a place big or collegiate enough to have Zipcar or similar short-term rental service, that's your answer. (I'm a longtime Zipcar user. It's let me down a few times, but for the most part it works.) Otherwise, yeah, you're looking at rentals.

Either choice will be cheaper and less hassle than buying or leasing, considering insurance costs.

Any chance of finding someone to carpool with?
posted by humbug at 7:13 AM on July 22 [5 favorites]

Honestly probably worth a shot to get on Facebook marketplace or Craigslist for your area and post what you are looking for. Someone out there is going to be happy to get a little money for the use of a car they aren't using that often. My sibling has developed a semi-informal carshare in his city this way -- first with friends, then a neighbor.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:25 AM on July 22 [5 favorites]

I'd start with short-term rentals as well, but another option might be to ask around your local network if you have one. You might find someone who rarely uses their car and would be happy to lend it out to you one day a week for the price of an occasional tank of gas or the right to use your parking spot the rest of the week or whatever arrangement works for the two of you.
posted by Stacey at 7:26 AM on July 22 [5 favorites]

You might also look on Turo.com. It lets you rent cars directly from owners. I've only used it a couple of times to do longer test drives of cars I was considering buying, but it worked well for that.

posted by procrastination at 7:32 AM on July 22 [11 favorites]

I think it's really going to be neighborhood-dependent, so this might be something you want to consider as you decide exactly where you want to live - will you have easy access to parking? Are there Zipcars in your neighborhood? Is there a car rental place nearby? Are there a lot of cars on Turo in your neighborhood?

If you're going to be someplace with "free" parking I'd argue that just sucking it up and buying a used car is ultimately going to be easier than picking up rentals every week and probably cheaper than using Zipcar. A 5-10 year old middle-of-the-road car isn't going to depreciate much over one year and ~4000 miles. Obviously you may need to pay for some maintenance and you'll have to insure it but you'll have to pay for insurance for rental cars as well.

Alternately, I suspect (based on the mileages you cite) that you're not in a market served by FlexCar but they do basically month-to-month leases.
posted by mskyle at 8:06 AM on July 22 [4 favorites]

Is there a reason the traditional car rental companies - Enterprise, Budget, etc. - won't work? They exist to do exactly what you describe.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 8:19 AM on July 22 [4 favorites]

It has been a while since I’ve needed to rent one, but Enterprise used to have really good weekend deals where I lived (Chicago) — their main business was work-week oriented so they cut deals to keep their cars generating revenue over the weekend rather than sitting idle. This may be less true if in your area rentals are principally vacation based, but it’s worth checking into for your needs
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 8:30 AM on July 22 [4 favorites]

without the high cost of buying a car and the hassle of selling it essentially less than 12 months later?

This might be potentially complicated and a slim shot but: If you're moving to an area where it's common for people to go live elsewhere for a year (for academia, work, etc.) and especially if you happen to be hooked into a relevant community (university, large global company) then you might be able to find someone interested in renting you their car for the year that they're gone.
posted by trig at 8:52 AM on July 22 [3 favorites]

When I did monthly rentals they made me take it back every 30 days to renew, and there was no guarantee I'd get the same car. The price was low during Covid but went up to like $1000/mo.

And I doubt you're gonna want to slog to the rental agency on every sunny day/powder day.

You could buy a used car acceptable for winter travel on CarMax, and sell it back to CarMax in a year, and not lose more than you would renting. But it depends on your state -- registration and taxes might add several thousand more bucks.

Maybe look into a short-term lease from a dealer like Nissan or Acura or Mitsubishi or VW that isn't super-in-demand right now.
posted by credulous at 8:58 AM on July 22 [2 favorites]

I was thinking ZipCar or similar car share service. 90 mile round trip is usually within the mileage limit, and one full day is about $100-150 depending on the car model you get. You can schedule the rentals out at least a month to ensure you get the model you want (though probably not the exact vehicle, but usually the same one's parked near you all the time, if available). ZipCar pays for insurance and gas and no need to worry about parking either, so the full day cost would be worth it, IMHO, than owning a car, even a used one and worry about parking, gas, insurance, maintenance, cleaning, license, trade-in value, etc.
posted by kschang at 10:25 AM on July 22

I just want to add that finding rentals with proper snow tires instead of all seasons can be difficult and that might be important to you if driving to a ski area.
posted by carolr at 11:20 AM on July 22 [3 favorites]

if you can get a 1 year lease on a car, it will probably be less expensive than zipcar 4 times a month (all day zip car rentals are often about $100, so $400/mo, but you can probably find a car lease for more like $300/mo), and *definitely* less expensive (and less hassle) than going to enterprise 4 times a week. If you have good credit it will be zero hassle, walk in, sign some papers, drive off within an hour or two, and when the lease is up you drive it back to the dealership and say goodbye.
posted by dis_integration at 2:43 PM on July 22

I moved away from home for about 11 months and sold my car to the family renting my home, and then bought it back from them a year later. It was an old but pretty reliable car. Sometimes buying a car makes some sense, even if you have to sell it again. A used car won't likely lose a lot of value in one year. Even now, I sometimes only drive my old car once a week or less. So I say look at craigslist used cars in the area where you'll be living.

I'd avoid zipcar and such, anything by the hour. A car for rent might cost something like $100/more for the weekend, though.
posted by bluedaisy at 8:36 PM on July 22 [1 favorite]

On the ski side, there might be a bus of some sort (ski club, resort specific bus, etc) that could get you to the slopes reliably. You'd lose schedule flexibility, but could make some friends on the bus. I don't know how common that setup is or if it works for you, but it exists in my city.

Rentals (e.g. be it zipcar or hertz or whatever) could work well for hiking, so long as you're sticking to trailheads that are accessible via paved roads. You probably wouldn't want to take them on forest service roads, or worse.

I'd be a little concerned about rental cars in winter, since it'd be hard to always have chains and/or winter tires and/or 4wd, so you might miss some days (or get stuck at the mountain). (also, some rental cars won't easily hold ski gear).

If I were in your shoes, I'd be tempted to buy a lightly used AWD/4WD vehicle, and expect to lose 10%-ish in that year; but I can also see why you would want to avoid that.
posted by whisk(e)y neat at 9:14 PM on July 22 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. I realize from reviewing these answers that snow tires are the deal-breaker here, so I either need to work around that (e.g. by using public transport for skiing) and use rentals for hiking, or stick to buying/ selling or lending from a friend. Thanks again!
posted by my log does not judge at 9:58 PM on July 22

dis_integration wrote:

if you can get a 1 year lease on a car, it will probably be less expensive than zipcar 4 times a month

You forgot to count insurance, gas, and maintenance (included with Zipcar). But I agree snow tires can be a problem. May need chains or traction devices.
posted by kschang at 2:10 AM on July 23

MeFi is very pro snow-tire and they're probably right but I promise you, millions of people in the US go skiing without snow tires every winter weekend (I am one of them, have never had snow tires and I ski regularly and have never gotten stuck in a ski area parking lot, although I did get stuck in my own driveway once).
posted by mskyle at 5:02 AM on July 23

It's difficult to answer this in a helpful way without knowing where you are more precisely.
posted by Kwine at 6:41 PM on July 23