Car rental - manual transmission

Hi,

We are going to be in Atlanta in May and need to rent a car for a few days. We both learned to drive manual cars only and are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with automatics. We tried once when we visited the USA last but it didn%26#39;t work.

We have tried to find a car rental company that hires cars with a manual transmission but have been unable to by contacting them via websites. So, we were wondering if there were any local experts in the know who could point us in the right direction. Many thanks in advance.

Car rental - manual transmission

This was a challenge! I checked with all of the major travel sites and Orbitz.com was the only one that even offered a manual option. However, it had no manual cars available when I ran a search on car rentals from the ATL airport. When I expanded the search parameters to include all of the city of Atlanta, GA, I got the following list of companies with rental cars with manual transmissions. You may want to either book through Orbitz or call the companies directly.

With the exception of the last company, all of these are located in downtown Atlanta, and would be an easy ride on MARTA from the airport to the Peachtree Center MARTA station. The last company, EZ Rent a Car, appears to be located near the airport and would presumably have a shuttle from the airport. You would need to call to confirm. Why it did not appear in the search results for airport locations is a mystery.

Hertz

202 Courtland Street

ATLANTA, GA 30303, US

Avis

143 Courtland St Ne

ATLANTA, GA 30303, US

Thrifty Car Rental

100 Courtland Street

ATLANTA, GA 30303, US

Budget

140 Courtland St

ATLANTA, GA 30303, US

EZ Rent a Car

Off airport

Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson ATL (ATL)

3891 College Park

ATLANTA, GA 30337-9999, US

Car rental - manual transmission

Thank you so much for all the effort. Unfortunately, I have been in touch with these and while it comes up on the search that they offer manual, when I have called them, they don%26#39;t. This is why I am in such a quandry. I was hoping there might be some small independent company that isn%26#39;t easily found. Your help is really appreciated!

I really don%26#39;t know of smaller companies that rent cars and I would think that most would rent automatic transmissions, as a manual transmission has such limited appeal and demand. My only other suggestion would be that sometimes car dealerships rent cars to individuals. You might try checking with a few major car dealerships. I am not very familiar with the car market in Atlanta, having located my car online, but the big name dealerships that come to mind are Bill Heard/Tom Jumper at 888-467-7403 and Jim Ellis 770-457-8211. These are enormous companies and might be worth a shot.

Thank you so much. We%26#39;ll give it a try. Otherwise we%26#39;ll have to get some training driving an automatic before we travel.

I don%26#39;t think you will have much luck finding such a place. Not enough people here know how to drive a manual. You don%26#39;t want to risk getting a piece of junk. Your best bet would be to practice up on one before you get here. Atlanta traffic is bad enough without having a strange car system to worry about.

My English wife had never driven an automatic before moving to the U.S.. When we first arrived, she mastered driving an automatic in just a couple of days. I wasn%26#39;t much help, as I lied to her about what the different gears. I told her that D (drive) stood for DON%26#39;T! put it in that gear and that R (reverse) stood for REAL FAST.

The hardest thing for her (and for me, as I had been driving a manual shift in England for five years) was to quit searching for the clutch with the left foot. There was also the driving on the wrong side of the road thing. I hadn%26#39;t once driven on the wrong side of the road in five years in the U.K., but I did it three times in downtown Atlanta in the first two days.

Good luck. Atlanta is not exactly the spot I would pick for my first driving in the U.S. experience. Our traffic is the stuff of legends.

I suggest you hire an automatic car in London a week or two before you leave. I%26#39;m sure many of the UK major hire companies will have cars with that option.This will then give you a chance to get used to an automatic car. In reality,it is easier to go from a manual to automatic rather than the other way.