Rental Car Ruckus 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Jake]

Just got back from three-ish days in Arizona with my parents. Dad had booked through Expedia, and the package included "an economy car rental" through Dollar. I asked if he minded my company at the rental counter so we got a good car, and of course he said that would be great.

Rental Counter man was named Trip, I think. Trip told us that what we paid for (a subcompact, apparently) would cover something like an Accent or Fiat 500. This is problem, because mom's suitcase is about the size of a Fiat.

A "compact" would be $7/day more and get a Focus/Elantra, a "midsize" was $15 and would be a Fusion or Optima. I asked if the Fusion would be a '13 and he said yes. He also got it for $10/day, which Dad was very okay with. I ended up driving this thing around for a few days.

It looked exactly like this - a red '13 Fusion SE with presumably no options:



Frankly, I'm impressed that this was a "base-ish" model. It came with a switchblade key, a la VW. The black cloth seats had a nice stitching design and were incredibly comfortable. Driver's was power adjustable with lumbar. Auto headlights. Steering wheel controls for audio/cruise. Had rear A/C vents which the backseat passengers appreciated. Center stack layout was nice, even without the gigantor MyFord Touch screen. Ours had the smaller (still full-color) screen like this:



The radio sounded great (and the free Sirius trial hadn't yet expired, which was great as old-people-Arizona FM radio plays awful music) for being the non-Sony system. The coldest air conditioning I experienced over the trip was inside this car. It cooled the car down quickly and kept it cold, even in indicated 110° temps. If you go full-throttle, it'll cut off the AC compressor until you stop that nonsense. Not like full-throttle is worth trying, though, which brings me to my next point.

In the ever-eloquent words of Sweet Brown, OH LAWD JESUS is this car slow. The SE's base engine is a 2.5L four, making 175 hp and something similar in torque. It's mated to a six-speed slushbox that actually wasn't all bad. But 175 hp and no torque is just not enough to move the car with any authority. I lost every single drag race to every single old person in Sun City West. Throttle position and number of revs just didn't matter.

I know they offer a 1.6L turbo and a 2.0 turbo (the 2.0 is my ST motor, de-tuned a bit) and I'd be very curious to see how either motor drives compared to the older 2.5. It was such a dog.

The car was easy enough to see out of, looked great (several compliments on styling from family members who got rides) inside and out, was big enough to carry all of our stuff, and kept us cool in the inhabited-for-no-fathomable-reason desert that is Arizona.

Nicely done, Ford.