ENTERPRISE has 2012 YARIS sedans for rentals and sale ...

[Onwrdigo]

The best way to select a new car is to rent the one's your considering to see how they have held-up after hundreds of people have driven/abused? them.

Ford Focus: Crazy transmission that always felt confused and was jerky. Could not see out the back very well either.
Fiesta: No...just no. It just felt like a blob of "cheap" plastic.
Rio5: Harsh engine when cold...sounded like marbles in the intake until it got up to operating temp...then it was ok....but that would drive me nuts in winter.
Accent: The care they take to build the Elantra and Sonata is not the same level built into the Accent.

It then came down to the Fiat 500 ( Pop or Sport) and the Toyota Yaris LE. I rented 5 Fiats and 5 Yaris Hatchbacks over a period of 3 months. I took 200 mile round trips in each of them with lots of city and highway driving.

I liked both, but in the end, it was a '12 Yaris LE Hatch that had been "badly" abused that convinced me to go Toyota. It still drove great except for the roar on the rear bald tire the agency refused to replace yet. It literally had 3 new tires and one bald one. And still drove great with hardly a rattle.

The Fiat was intriguing, but that transmissions when cold, is the harshest shifting automatic I have felt in years and there were various rattles in a few of them...never the same rattles, but each one was unique to each car (inconsistency in "build quality").....could not stand that either. Fiat blogs have shown some very interesting problems from the owners that the dealers are struggling to figure out. I think by 2015 or 2016, they will get them right, but I still have an issue with the car being shipped in parts from Italy. The engine goes to Detroit for assembly and then that is trucked to meet the rest of the car in Toluca Mexico (the old PT Cruiser Assembly Plant) to be finished. I am just not comfortable with that.

The five Yaris' I rented were consistent with each other whether they had 4000 miles or 40,000 miles. So I went Yaris. Glad I did.

And "yes", when the rental agencies sell them, they are asking just below a new car price, but they have some serious mileage on them. So I went with a new one.