Imagine the coolest car you can in your head right now. If it’s not a Mustang, that’s completely fine, you’re entitled to your own opinion, even if it’s a wrong one. If it is a mustang, hell yeah amigo! I’m not a car guy, and even I can look at a soft top Mustang and see the cool oozing out of the back. So, I decided to add at least one thing to ✓ Project Bucket List that would make me feel masculine, and that was to drive one.
For our trip to Los Angeles, we decided to book a car. We’d heard about how difficult LA is to get around with public transport. Heading to the last place I rented a car from just to check the prices, Enterprise, I started filling out the form and get to a little section where you pick which kind of car you want. It ranged from trucks to little city cars to something titled “sporty car“. All of which seemed to hover around the same price, £300 for 8 days. I checked everywhere, spoke to customer support, tried VPNs to check the price in different countries, and found that, for whatever reason, renting a car at LAX from the UK gave you this crazy deal. It also, for some reason, included all the additional insurances?
I checked a few forums and found that “sporty car” can mean anything like, from Audi’s, to Dodge Chargers, Mustangs – basically anything fast-shaped. Oh, and, for reference, I’ve just had a quick google. The cheapest Mustang I can find to rent in the UK starts at £195/day with a £2500 deposit. That means renting this car in the UK would cost 5 times more than in Los Angeles! After making sure it definitely did include the insurance, I finally took the plunge and paid £297 for a sporty car for 8 days.
So, fast forward a month or two. We land in LA, it’s late in the evening, and we head to Enterprise Car Rental. We rock up to the gentleman working, and he has the single most west coast accent you could imagine. We sort out all the paperwork, then he tells us to head over to the parking lot, and that they’ll sort us out with a car.
As we walk down the lot, the attendant tells us that we’re free to pick anything sporty, and gestures at this gorgeous diagonal shaped yellow blot. A Mustang. He keeps going, showing us a Dodge Charger, and I try to play it as cool as I possibly can. “Do you have the Mustang in orange?” I ask. “No, I think we only have it in yellow or black“, he says, looking for another car. “We’ll take the yellow one”.
We shove our luggage into this soft top sports car, and it occupies 100% of the space, both boot and back seats, then, we set off. I am immediately petrified of this beautiful car. It’s so responsive, it accelerates so fast, it’s so sparkly! 8 time zones ago I was in a Nissan Qashqai, this is the step up of the planet. It’s like going from a Qashqai to a, well, a Mustang.
We set off, it’s dark, and I’m on the opposite side of the road in a car that I don’t feel comfortable in. Thank Lucifer it’s an automatic, one less thing to think about, but I keep going to grab where the clutch should be with my hand. The drivers in LA are furious. They all have somewhere to be. We’re going through the highway and seeing all these American signs flying past us, and we’re using google maps to navigate to somewhere we don’t really understand how to get to.
Finally, we arrive safely at the airbnb, and the next morning, we get to really appreciate the car. We get to see how fast this baby goes.
Here’s the thing with renting a sports car in LA. You ever heard about the traffic in LA? Lala Land’s opening number is literally filmed in a traffic jam. The traffic is dire. If google maps tells you that it’ll take 40 minutes to get somewhere, it actually means it’s going to take a little over 2 hours. So, rather than revving my engine and going 0-60 in 4 seconds, here’s our real life experience.
Now, I can’t pretend it wasn’t fucking cool to drive. We got compliments from people. Turns out when someone shouts “Hey nice ride“ when are you in traffic, you don’t hear “Hey, that’s a nice car that you’re sat inside of”. Instead, you hear something a little more like “You’re a good person”.
And, and, and, it turns out Mustang guys have a secret nod. Just a small polite bow of the head as you each acknowledge each other. And, LA has a lot of Mustangs, and a lot of Chargers. So, despite how much traffic there was, we drove around like a pair of jammy dodgers. Just look at us. Kymberley looks like Audrey Hepburn. Impeccable style made out of a t-shirt (tell nobody).
On the flip side, there’s something worth noting about renting a nice car for a week. I was scared stiff of parking it anywhere it might get stolen. We literally had the insurance and all that jazz, but it felt like we were asking for trouble in a few of the neighbourhoods we parked in.
Second, if you’re a big guy, don’t get a small car. I had to shuffle and grunt and groan every time I needed to fit in or out. There was absolutely no graceful way of getting out of this car.
Look, here I am getting out of it.
I barely fit through the door.
