Silvercar was my favorite company to rent cars from. They rented only Audis and had a generally all-inclusive model. For $5 they refilled your gas at market prices. You paid actual cost of toll tracking, no extortionate daily fee. However the Audi-owned rental car company is shutting down all airport locations in the U.S. in early December. They will retain Audi dealership locations.
Silvercar operations will be shifting from airport locations to off-airport Audi dealerships.
Audi is planning to eventually open more dealerships that support their Silvercar rental service, but in the short term, there will be quite a few locations where Silvercar previously had an airport location but they don’t currently have a nearby Audi dealership with Silvercar service.
In some cases apparently Silvercar plans to reimburse Lyft rides to dealerships near an airport. In other cases they may charge a vehicle delivery fee (expected to be $50 in Las Vegas). And where there’s no nearby dealership you’d be on your own to get to an in-town location, though of course you wouldn’t be paying airport and tourist taxes on the rental.
This makes sense unfortunately though I will miss renting from Silvercar regularly (there goes my points in their loyalty program).
- Not only did Silvercar depend on air travel – which is down over 60% still – it depended to some extent on business travel which is down closer to 85%, and expected to take longer to recover. Silvercar wasn’t marketed as the cheapest option, though all-in they were often quite competitive. Instead it was an upscale option that wasn’t generally more than midweek business rental prices. So it was attractive to unmanaged business travelers.
- The road to recovery for business travel is going to be longer, and though Audi doesn’t publish how much cash Silvercar is burning it doesn’t appear that they were profitable even before the pandemic. Retreating to renting cars from dealerships saves on rent and staff.
Silvercar was the target of class warfare for being a better experience at a higher price though a straight 20% off on all rentals made Silvercar frequently very affordable for a better product that Avis, Hertz or National provided..
I might be wrong but I always thought Silvercar is more for leisure travelers willing to pay a little more to get a luxury car (without status traditional rental agencies charge a ridiculous upgrade fee for the nicer cars).
As a former consultant, and consultant represent a large part of business travel, there is no way I could rent an Audi from Silver Car. Not only do firms require you to rent from specific agencies for insurance purposes (usually Hertz/Avis/National), but I could get good upgrades with status and without getting into trouble trying to expense Silvercar rate. I’m sure there are firms that partnered with Silvercar but I think its a very small percentage.
Now a leisure travelers who really want to drive an Audi might actually be willing to go through the hassle of picking up the car off-airport, especially if they start charging lower rates without the airport fees which can sometimes be equivalent to rental rate.
Agreed that as a leisure traveler, I used them often. Thanks for the heads up on this Gary!
This is too bad. Whenever they were available at my travel locations, I rented them. Their rates were up front and honest and I never felt that I was being scammed like I regularly feel at other car rental agencies.
A while back, Enterprise was advertising “Audi A-3’s (or similar}”, so I called the location where I intended to rent from. I was told they had no Audi’s on the lot and he hadn’t seen one in a long time.
Silvercar was never an option really for me, as IRROPS would make Silvercar impossible to use, whereas ANY other car rental company can handle a car rented at LGA returned at JFK/EWR without a major issue. Plus, the last time I used Silvercar, the Audis were getting a bit long in the tooth…and the price was VERY high.
@paul That’s why Gary stated unmanaged business travelers. There are lots of us out there.
I heard Hertz isn’t even buying new cars at this point and that they had sold off many of their newest cars, so what you get may have way more miles than a typical rental. I’ve noticed this with my recent rentals from there. Not sure if its nationwide.
I hope they reconsider at some point going back to airports. The service was excellent and worth the slightly extra cost.