Nothing says "awesome Hawaiian vacation" like renting a V8 convertible and blasting around Hawaii's cliffside roads.
But what if the SS badges on the Camaro Convertible you rented actually meant nothing? Well, that just happened to one Hertz customer.
Eddie Ramones was on a vacation in Hawaii. When he got to the Hertz desk, he saw an ad that said they had SS Camaros available for rent. Like any red blooded gearhead, Ramones decided to jump for the fastest car he could. The black convertible he got had SS badges on the back and looked to be a lot of fun.
However, after he drove for a while he realized that this car wasn't really as advertised at all. It was missing that V8 rumble. It was also slower than he expected. That's when he opened the hood and saw that it was actually a V6. After running the VIN, he determined that the car was actually a 2LT V6 convertible, which we also verified.
The VIN in the car, the VIN on the keys, and VIN on the registration all match a V6 2LT. The rental agreement says SS and Ramones says that the keys also specify an SS.
There is a substantial upcharge for the V8 Camaro, which Hertz subsequently refunded to Ramones once he reported that it wasn't the car he received. But how does a car get misrepresented like this? We have a few theories which may or may not be accurate:
1) Hertz puts SS badges on cars that are obviously 2LTs to trick customers. We doubt this one, since a number of other customers on the Camaro5 forums have reported renting SS Camaros from Hertz and have had no issues.
But could this happen at a local branch without corporate knowing so they could get more SS rentals? Yes, of course. But would a branch want to risk a PR blowup that could cost them their business? We sincerely doubt it.
2) Ramones is lying and stuck on the SS badge himself. Again, we doubt this, as he has video and photos of everything around the car, including the badges and the VIN number. He would also have had to doctor all the paperwork and lie about getting a refund. Why would he go through all this trouble and post online to then have to confess to a stupid lie?
3) Someone else rented the car and applied an SS badge to it while they were driving so they'd look cool. When they returned it, the Hertz employees mistakenly inventoried it as an SS and nobody noticed until Ramones rented it. A lot of people like to rent these cars to show off to friends, so it isn't out of the realm of possibility that someone put the badge on it to impress friends at a high school reunion or some sort of similar event. This seems possible, but then again, how do you explain suddenly having another SS Camaro in the fleet?
4) Chevy sold it to them like this. We've heard of orders being screwed up for cars before, so this could happen. Maybe nobody noticed for months?
No matter what, something did happen here, we're just not exactly sure what.
We spoke to Hertz, and they told us that they are aware and have "set the car aside until they find out what is going on." They will update us as soon as they know what the deal is with the car and what actually happened.
(Hat Tip to Camaro5!)