Mirage in U.S. Car Rental Fleet?

[southernharmony]

Hello everyone.

First post here. Considering buying a Spark, Mirage, or Yaris in the near future...

I need to take a trip out of town for a few days, and I'd like to rent a Mirage, Yaris, or Spark - does anyone know if any of these are available as a rental from any of the rental car companies?

I figure I'll make up the cost of the rental after my first fill up since my van only gets about 20 mpg.

Thank you,

Southern Harmony

[MetroMPG]

Hi, welcome.

Yes, the Mirage is in rental fleets. Festiboi did a really in-depth review based on a weekend rental:

Thread: A Weekend with a Mirage Rental


So did Canoehead: Test drive/review: 2014 Mirage CVT ES (Canada)

The question is whether it's available in your local rental places.

[debburyl]

The best advice I can give is to go and Buy a Mirage.you will save in the long run
And you will get almost three times the gas mileage

[grsupercity]

Unless u wanna burn more oil then gas, then dont buy a spark!

[debburyl]

Unless u wanna burn more oil then gas, then dont buy a spark!

Your welcome
You mean the DaeWoo Spark? I wouldn't encourage no one to buy that car.

[cookiemonster]

Yup, what grsupercity & debburyl said ... severe engine issues have been reported by multiple users at ~20,000 miles.

[Mikhail]

I spotted Mirages only at Budget rent-a-car stores.

[Ares]

Unless u wanna burn more oil then gas, then dont buy a spark!

Amen to this. Just go and take a peek at the Spark forums.

Where in the midwest are you from? Maybe there's a forum member near you

Most of everyone here was on the same boat as you are now... Looking at those three vehicles and more... When it came down to it, in my opinion, the Mirage had the better options/features for the $.

For the 'top of the line' mirage, you would probably get a base model Yaris. 16k + tt&l gets you:
steel wheels
no push button start
lower MPG (about 30/34/38 iirc)
no rear folding seats
no fogs

What the yaris does have that the mirage does not:
dual vanity mirrors
working rear shock absorbers
stiffer suspension that would handle more than 600lbs of cargo

Which, then, begs the question: what will you be using the car for?
In my case:
1. I almost always drive alone. If not, I usually have 2 maybe 3 passengers max. Even with 4 passengers, the car was pretty peppy (power wise). The biggest down side with having that many people is the lack of dampening on the rear suspension. If you've seen one of those 80's or 70's cars that have blown rear shock absorbers - that's what the mirage feels like with 4 or 5 adults.
2. My drive is about 40% fwy and 60% city - which works well for the mirage. However, another owner here (or two) have already showed satisfaction with driving the mirage more on the freeway than on city. I believe one of them drives a total of 100 miles or so a day?
3. I almost never require trunk space. The couple of times I did: stuck a full mountain bike in the back and stuck a foosball table in the back. Worked for me.