fancy schmancy
Before you read below, you absolutely must read this post about the worst car in Iceland. Trust me, it’s worth your time AND it’s relevant to the story below.
Since you most definitely read the linked post above, you know that I found out that we would be driving the worst car in Iceland just moments before we arrived at the rental car agency.
Similarly, on our recent trip to Oregon, I found out moments before we picked up our car that my husband had deviated from our usual plan. When we rent a car for travel, we usually get mid- or full-size. This is actually a step up from the early days of our marriage when we would get compact cars. However, these days, we are in our 50s and need a bit more comfort and elbow room, so we’ve upgraded a smidge. This means in the US we usually end up with a Toyota or something comparable. We were upgraded to a Volvo on a trip last year and neither one of us could believe our good fortune.
Related: We are not fancy car people, nor do we replace our vehicles very often. Currently, we have a 10 year old Mazda CX-5 and a 10 year old Toyota Camry, both of which we bought used, and the Mazda minivan that we bought new in 2000 when we had a toddler and a baby on the way. 26 years old and it’s still going strong-ish — we only drive it around town, due to a couple of minor incidents when it broke down when our offspring were new drivers.
What I’m saying is, while we no longer drive crappy rental cars, we also usually drive normal-not-fancy cards both when we travel and in our daily lives.
So when we arrived in Oregon last month and my husband mentioned that he had upgraded our rental car because the price differential was small, I really didn’t know what to expect. I was thinking maybe a Toyota mid-size SUV.
What I was not expecting was the mid-size BMW SUV that we got the keys to.
I was flummoxed. The rental company had entrusted us with the keys to a luxury vehicle made by Bayerische Motoren Werke??? Are we even qualified? No lie, I cannot remember a time before May 2026 when I have ridden in a beemer and I feel like I’d surely remember if I had ever driven one.
Y’all, that car was smoooooooth. It was so technologically advanced that it practically drove itself. And comfortable, oh so comfy. I napped on almost any drive longer than an hour.
Don’t worry, a short stint of luxury has not changed either of us at all. He’s still him and I’m still me. We have another trip coming up and I just verified that he has rented us neither a crappy car nor a fancy one. Nope. We’ll be in a Toyota Camry or the equivalent and that’s just fine with us.
Tell me: What kind of car person are you?
We have been fancy car people (Volvo XC90, Chevy Suburban) and not so fancy car people. We are mid-fancy (Jeep Cherokee). But, imagine our delight when we were upgraded to BMWs on our 10 day jaunt through the Netherlands, an SUV and a wagon. We incurred $600 worth of speeding tickets...but that's another story.