the worst car in Iceland
Iceland is expensive. This is known.
My husband is thrifty. This is also known.
He is not, however, cheap, which is important. He will absolutely look for a good deal, but he will never compromise safety in the name of saving a few dollars. Please keep this in mind as you read the rest of this.
We were in Iceland for a weekend, as part of the ever-popular stopover on the way to or from another country. In this case, we were on our way back from Amsterdam for our children’s spring break.
My husband originally reserved a rental car with a well-known international company for $100/day, which was a good deal for Iceland. Right before we arrived — and without mentioning it to me — he reserved a different car with a budget local rental car company. A super duper budget rental car company.
He mentioned this to me a few minutes before we picked up the car.
This business was run out of a Quonset hut by a group of young men. And for the vast sum of $40/day we got this:
A 25-year-old Toyota with more than 200,000 miles on the odometer.
This sweet ride was dented and scratched. There were rust spots and missing trim panels. No hubcaps on the tires. And for good measure at some point the rear wiper had been ripped off.
The windows were manual, which confused our children, who had never seen non-electric car windows. And they couldn’t figure out where to put their drinks, as there were no cupholders. We didn’t even bother to lock the doors.
There was a huge NO SMOKING sticker slapped on the dash, but the car utterly reeked of cigarette smoke. So much so that we not only didn’t lock the doors, we left the windows down at night in a futile attempt to air things out.
I was simultaneously amused and unamused by my husband’s frugality. We almost immediately named the car the POS (piece of shit).
After we left the rental Quonset hut we were about five minutes down the road when one of the dudes chased us down in his far nicer car and flagged us over. He popped the hood of the POS and discovered that someone had forgotten to put the oil cap back on. We have no idea how they knew this, as there was obviously no computer in the car to alert them to this. So we had to go back to the Quonset hut so that the dudes could refill the oil.
The whole way back, I was silently praying that they would swap us into a better car. Nope. Instead, three of the dudes worked with the speed and concentration of an Indy pit crew so that they could get us back on the Icelandic highway in the POS as quickly as possible.
We drove around for a couple of days in the POS and it surprised us with how well it ran. The heater was amazing in its warmth. And the car had been vacuumed and cleaned thoroughly before we got it.
Of course, when the winds kicked up, it always felt as if we were going to be swept sideways and roll off into the distance like a Nordic tumbleweed. This is Iceland, where the winds are so fierce that drivers are warned to firmly hold tightly to car doors when opening them, lest the doors be bent backward or ripped off entirely.
The POS was by far the junkiest vehicle we saw while in Iceland, but to be fair we covered only one corner of the country, so it’s entirely possible that there were worse cars somewhere else. Still, I noticed several people giving our car some serious side-eye at various stops during our weekend.
When we returned the POS, no lie, the dudes inspected it as if it were pristine and fresh off the lot. I couldn’t even figure out how they would know if there were new dings or scratches, but we weren’t charged for any damage so I guess it’s all good.
And presumably with the $120 we saved, we’ll be able to one day retire, like, one day earlier.