What to hire for a long weekend out of Durban
The counter will try to sell you an upgrade. Sometimes the upgrade is the right call and sometimes it is a bigger car with worse aircon. Here is how we choose for the routes people actually drive from here.
The cabin of a mid-size automatic, showing the dashboard, centre console and rear air vents.
The mid-size compromise, and when it stops working
For two adults and a weekend's luggage going up to the Midlands or across to Ballito, a mid-size automatic saloon or hatch is the sensible booking. Expect R800 to R1 300 a day depending on the month, a boot of around 420 to 480 litres which swallows two soft bags and a cooler box, and fuel consumption in the mid sevens per hundred on the open road. The ride on that class of car has improved enormously and most of them now handle the patched sections north of Mooi River without rattling your fillings loose.
Where it stops working is the fourth person. Three adults across a mid-size rear seat for three hours is a negotiation, and with a cooler box in the footwell it becomes an argument. If there are four of you plus bags for three nights, step up a class rather than renting a roof box you then have to load in a parking garage with a two-metre height bar.
Seven seats, honestly
Seven-seaters get hired for the wrong reason, which is the number seven. In most of the compact ones the third row is honest for two children in booster seats on a short run and nobody else, and with that row up the boot is a parcel shelf. If you genuinely need seven seats plus luggage for a weekend in the Berg, you are looking at a large body-on-frame vehicle at R1 600 to R2 400 a day, with fuel consumption around eleven per hundred and a turning circle that makes the parking at a Midlands farm stall an event.
Our usual advice to a family of six is to take two mid-size cars instead of one large one. It costs roughly the same, everybody has room, one driver can leave early with the children while the other follows, and if something goes wrong mechanically the weekend does not end. The objection is always that two cars means two sets of tolls, which is true and comes to about R280, and that is a small price for not spending four hours as the person in the middle of the second row.
Aircon, humidity and the climb out of town
Durban in February is thirty degrees with humidity that makes it feel worse, and a hired car that has stood in an open lot all morning is an oven. Test the aircon before you leave the bay, on recirculate, and if it is not cold within ninety seconds ask for another car. This is not fussiness. On the climb out of town towards Hillcrest, a labouring compressor on a small engine means the car feels gutless and you spend the whole first hour annoyed with a vehicle that is actually fine.
Rear vents matter more than a sunroof. Anybody who has driven children up the N3 in January knows that a second row without its own vents turns into a complaints department somewhere around Camperdown. When you are given a choice between two cars in the same class, look for the vents in the back of the centre console and for a windscreen that is not so steeply raked that the sun bakes your forearms. The expensive-sounding features are usually less useful than those two.
Boot space against the roof rack
Boot litres are published and comparable, which makes them one of the few honest numbers in motoring. A mid-size saloon gives you 420 to 500 litres, a mid-size crossover roughly the same with a taller shape that takes a cooler box upright, and a double-cab bakkie gives you an enormous load bay that is open to the weather and to anybody in a parking lot. For a weekend of soft bags the crossover shape wins. For a weekend with bicycles or a braai grid, the bakkie does, provided you have a tonneau cover and somewhere secure to park.
Roof boxes and racks on hired cars are usually a bad idea. Fitting is charged, the box eats your fuel consumption by a noticeable margin at 120, many parking garages in town have height bars at two metres which the box clears by nothing, and any damage to the roof skin during fitting becomes your conversation at return. If the luggage does not fit inside the car, hire a bigger car.
Automatic, and why the Midlands settles it
Manual hires are cheaper by R80 to R150 a day and we still mostly book automatics for anybody over about fifty-five, for one reason: traffic. The crawl on the N3 between Pinetown and the top of Fields Hill at five in the afternoon is a left-knee endurance event in a manual, and the stop-start climb out of Pietermaritzburg on Town Hill behind trucks is worse. On a weekend route with any gradient, the automatic is not a luxury, it is the difference between arriving relaxed and arriving sore.
The exception is a bakkie for a farm weekend, where a manual still gives better control on a steep wet track and where the automatic premium on that class can be R250 a day. If the trip is all tar, take the automatic and spend the saving on the lower excess. If the trip ends on a hill of red mud outside Nottingham Road, take the manual and the extra traction, and make sure the agreement allows you to be there at all.
Three things to take away
- Four adults with luggage means a class up, not a roof box and a parking garage height bar.
- Check the aircon on recirculate in the collection bay and reject the car if it is not cold in ninety seconds.
- Two mid-size cars often beat one seven-seater for a family of six on cost, comfort and resilience.
