Renting out your own car

When Elly and I in 1998 Adrem Car Rental has started In Maastricht, we only had 2 cars to rent. Banks, after all, don't queue up to finance a handful of vehicles for you when you're just starting out with a car rental company…

Before long, we regularly had too few cars to rent out. And disappointing customers is, of course, the last thing you want when you've just started a business. So, why not rent out your own car?

Old Golf

We used to drive a private old 1983 Golf diesel automatic. If our two cars were rented out, and someone called us for another car, I would just offer them that one. We couldn't go anywhere anyway.

I was honest and said the Golf was an old car and that I was perfectly happy for the customer to look elsewhere for a rental company. But to my surprise, our old Golf was regularly used by customers who found it quite amusing to drive in such an old Golf.

In fact, one customer drove it around for weeks – he found it a lovely car.

Priest from Brazil

Around 2001, we had a visit from a friendly gentleman. He told us that he was a priest in Brazil, and that he was in the Netherlands for 2 months. If he had been on leave in the Netherlands before, a garage would lend him an old car for a small amount to get around. However, that garage no longer existed.

He asked me if we could do something similar for him.

We had already rented out all of our regular hire cars. They would have been too expensive for him anyway.

I still had an old 2CV sitting around. I had bought that with the intention of converting it into an open-top sports car – Le Patron, who is still available for hire from us. I hadn't gotten around to that yet at the time.

The car wasn't in the best condition anymore – I'd take the body off and throw it away (the photo next to this is of another car, in much better condition). But the priest actually thought it was a good idea to drive around in the car for 2 months. In Brazil, he didn't even have a car.

Perhaps you saw him driving between Maastricht and Tongeren then – he had to go there every day. I remember that TV Maastricht interviewed him at the time. Fortunately, the priest didn't mention that he was driving a car from Adrem...

Tailgate gone

A little later I arrived at an old Citroën AX, you might remember the model. I had traded that car in when selling a former rental car.

I was called. To see if we had a car available for this evening.

And lo and behold: we had too few hire cars again.

And again I said honestly: it is an old pastry, but you can rent it from me.

The next day the tenant returned.

He was deeply ashamed.

The car no longer had a tailgate. As you can see in the photo above, the AX has a rear window. The rest of the tailgate was attached to the bottom. A nice idea from Citroën.

The tenant, after doing their shopping, slammed the tailgate a bit too hard, causing the window to shatter into thousands of pieces. The rest of the tailgate had fallen onto the car park.

Car sharing

For us, it wasn't difficult to share our cars with other people. They were cheap little cars, and we don't have much of an attachment to our cars anyway – we preferred to rent them out as often as possible. I find it fascinating to see that car sharing is now on the rise.

Would you dare/be willing to share your car with others? I'm curious to hear your thoughts! Rather with us a Car hire in the Stein regionThis is possible at Adrem!