Has anyone Auto-crossed a rental?

Just curious... And if you have you have full immunity if you share the story...

To settle a bet, I'll be autocrossing one this spring. I expect something terrible to happen and the car to be towed back to the rental lot.

Autocrossing a rental is for wusses.

Around here, people rallycross their rentals...

People have done One Lap of America in rentals...

Did a NASA HPDE 1 weekend with one once. Computer speed limiter in the Cobalt kicked in @99 MPH on the downhill at Road Atlanta before turn 10A. My instructor thought it was fun to have me chase down buddys of his who were instructing other newbs with less experience that were in fully prepped track cars. He got a kick out of waving to his buds while we passed after a point by. Said race cars then had to slowly follow us the length of that straight till we pulled away through the next set of turns. I think you can learn a lot about staying on the line in an underpowered autotragic momentum car.

When the car was returned it may have needed new brake pads and had clean outlines in the dust & rubber marks where numbers & stripes had been applied with racer tape.

I can neither confirm nor deny

I can say that an entry level Benz from a few years ago can do one and a half hot laps on Summit Point Main before the brakes overheat. When the driver limped her in, they were throwing out copious amounts of smoke, but didn't actually catch fire.wasnt me, but the driver in question has been known to take whatever rental he's using out for a session or two.

irish44j wrote: Autocrossing a rental is for wusses. Around here, people rallycross their rentals...

If you can't explain this to your rental agency...

...don't rallycross a rental. Or any car you can't afford to lose.

Didn't you buy the extra insurance?

irish44j wrote: ^^ lol.... no, I personally wouldn't rallycross a rental. But we've had 4 or 5 different ones at events this year...

I've autoxed a few rental cars. Scariest one was a Pontiac Grand Prix mid 2000s type. Had to use the foot e-brake to get the back end to come out. Cobalt rental a few times as well.

Back in '98 or so, I autocrossed a rental Escort at the AROC National Convention. Not a badly set up car, could get it into a nice little drift.

Just within the past year while out of town (some people go sightseeing, we look for autocrosses) Mustang and Volvo S60

Loooooooong time ago, I rented a Shelby CSX-T for a weekend, installed a harness and ran it at the Westchester Sportscar Club's October Autofest. I won my class and two of my friends took first and third in novice.

Somebody rolled an Isuzu i-Mark RS at that event and I remember being very nervous for the rest of the day.

I had broken sway bar on GTI, picked up 350Z when they first came out, left GTI at rental lot. Drove directly accross the street autocroseed it at local mall within sight of rental lot. Pulled into lot, took numbers off the doors & laughed all the way home. Car was covered in pieces of rubber all over the doors. This was in Santa Fe NM years ago.

I remember reading a magazine article about drag racing a rental Neon once…. with a 150 hp shot of nitrous stuffed in it.

Two days after I got my lisence I convinced my dad to rent a Nissan Altima for an autocross. It actually did very well. We ran 51psi rear and 38psi up front giving a nice rotation through the transitions.

JohnRW1621 wrote: I can neither confirm nor deny

He he, there is video of this

There was at least one rental at both the rallycross National Challenge event in Texas this spring and at rallycross Nationals.

Have you ever been to a $20xx Challenge? That's the cool place to autocross your rental.

Back in the '90's when CFR SCCA was still running autocrosses at MacDill AFB me and a few friends rented a Ford Probe GT and co-drove it on the "practice" day on Saturday. There were a lot of cars and a fairly big/fast course so whoever was driving next would just stand in line until the car came off course and then we would swap out.

That car barely got a break that day and someone even spun it at some point. We had used shoe polish on the tires to check roll and when the event was over the polish wouldn't rub off, so we spray painted over them. I was the only guy who came back Sunday and actually competed but the front tires were almost bald and the transmission was not shifting properly at all. I swapped the tires front to back for the competition and cleaned them off as well. By the time I dropped it back off at the airport rental location it was running on less than 6 cylinders, not shifting right and with a few cone smudges. I did the quick drop and ran. Never heard a word from them...

The road rallye group I used to run with would do a two day cross Florida event every summer and after the first year I always rented for that. Nothing handles like a rental.

I am of two minds on this. The evil one says "what fun". The event organizer one says "would you knowingly allow that at an event with your name on it?" I am not so sure about the second part.

Shouldn't this thread be title " Has anyone not autocrossed a rental?"

codrus wrote: I remember reading a magazine article about drag racing a rental Neon once…. with a 150 hp shot of nitrous stuffed in it.

That was Car and Driver IIRC. It was hilarious.

back in the day …. when Hertz would rent Mustang 350GT's, it's my understanding that many times they were used in actual w2w races, and then returned to Hertz