There’s an old saying that nothing revs like a rental car, underlining a major lack of respect from customers towards their temporary rides.
But the disregard for mechanical sympathy is only one aspect of vehicular abuse that rental companies face in their line of work, and as one of South Africa’s largest car hire groups tells us, some rather interesting items can be found in fleet vehicles after rentees have had their way with them.
Rental company Europcar has sent us a list of the strangest things they’ve found in cars so far this year, and along with the usual sunglasses, wallets and CDs that have been left behind, employees have come across numerous other standout items.
One car was returned to Europcar’s KwaZulu-Natal branch with a pile of goat droppings in the boot.
“Although we’re not sure if there was an actual goat in the boot or if the goat droppings were there for good luck,” said operations director George Corbett, .
Another vehicle, which had been hired by a personal protection agency, had a grenade rolling around under the seat that was discovered by an employee on his way to refuel. Even more interesting is the fact that this has happened twice, says Europcar. A branch in Cape Town also found guns in a car’s glove compartment.
Another car in KwaZulu-Natal was returned with a live snake curled up in the engine compartment, which required a call to the SPCA to remove the serpent.
South Africans also appear to enjoy chicken.
Europcar says chicken bones are a common find. Eww!
But perhaps the most interesting items, and some that even Europcar won’t give us further details on, was what was found in an eight-seater bus that was hired for a bachelor party weekend earlier this year. All we know is that the paraphernalia was “humorous”. Your guess is as good as ours as to what went down, but we have our suspicions. Hopefully it wasn’t too difficult to clean up ... - The Star