Rental Car Review: The 41,000-Mile Experience
Not exactly an ideal rental car, but you might say it is a reflection of what has been happening through the COVID-19 pandemic for the travel industry.

Not exactly an ideal rental car, but you might say it is a reflection of what has been happening through the COVID-19 pandemic for the travel industry.
I figured that I needed some freedom of mobility. I also needed to get some wheel time in my “down time” between vehicles to work with. Why not rent a car?
Let’s be real – it is a Corolla. It is also the most popular trim level for both retail and commercial customers. It is basic without being too basic. It had what I needed. Plus, I had projections on performance and efficiency that would fit this trip and my requirements.
No matter the time of year, a Toyota Camry will get you through it. In sub-zero temperatures, scorching 100-degree summer days full of mosquitoes, and everything else in-between – this is the car that you always counted on for decades.
Kia is no exception. The recent introduction of the Optima replacement, the K5, is one piece of evidence that Kia wants to continue to sell sedans. This is a strategy the company is executing, while they are expanding their SUV portfolio.
The concept of this mini-series of review articles was to take the energy of the Mid-Continent Road Trip and create some content to fill the month with vehicles that should have been covered on this site. The result is what you have read on this site so far.
There seems to be a theme unfolding here. A disturbing and sad theme, but it is the reality that 2020 had yielded for us. On top of a pandemic and the movement towards social justice, many car lines are being eliminated by the end of this calendar year.
We can easily say that some car lines do not deserve to get eliminated from a manufacturer’s lineup. Then again, we have seen the proliferation of the SUV in the past few years and how one of them supplant a sale of a sedan.
It has been something I have witnessed through a brief foray or two into Chevrolet’s mid-sized, three-row SUV since before its first appearance in showrooms in the summer of 2017. I applauded the fact that it has adult-sized space in the third row, despite having access to it from the passenger side only. I also applauded the fact that it is contemporary enough to fit within Chevrolet’s new design guidelines, along with huge advances to its technology offerings.
Based on my original review of this current generation of this popular compact SUV a year ago, I found it to be the “top of its class.” It certainly made some huge steps in terms of engineering, design, technology, and efficiency. Toyota is not complaining about this current generation of the RAV4 a bit.