My first and most important tip for driving a car in Italy is don’t do it. Jump on a train. Walk. Swim. Anything but drive.
I am no expert at car hire and I only have limited experience driving abroad. But driving is just driving right? Hiring a car in Italy? What could possibly go wrong?
The answer is everything. I remember booking my car a few months before travelling and thinking, although it was a fairly expensive deal, it was nothing to really complain about. The car in the picture was a brand new sporty looking Ford Focus. I was happy enough with that. It was advertised as mid sized and would just about have enough space for the five of us plus luggage. I imagined I would be jumping into a modern car with sat nav, digital radio, windows rolled down as I cruised through the rolling Tuscan hills. It would be a dream come true.
Fast forward a few months and I am sitting in a bashed up Fiat 500 with no sat nav, unable to hear the radio for my family shouting at me while trying to stay ahead of a lorry that had almost clamped onto the arse of my Italian shit heap. And this was just a few minutes after leaving Pisa airport.
Before heading off, I asked the guy at the car hire desk why I was being handed the keys to a Fiat 500 instead of a Ford Focus. This was followed by an intense exchange with his colleague in Italian. Mind you, I later learned that every conversation between Italians was intense. Folk going about their every day business buying bread or getting on a bus seem to be involved in lengthy heated debates. He returned to me and said the small print stated that this was just an example of the size of car I would receive and that the Fiat 500 was the XL model and therefor a similar size to the Focus. I don’t understand Italian but I imagine the conversation with his colleague could have been translated as follows:
Italian hire car assistant 1: “This guy says he booked a brand new Ford Focus on our website. LOL. Do we actually have one of those?”
Italian hire car assistant 2: “No, we only had that for one day for the website photo”
Italian hire car assistant 1: “Ah right. Anything left that can take 5 passengers plus luggage?”
Italian hire car assistant 2: “No. Just pretend the Fiat 500 XL is big enough. It’s that one that wee Luigi sleeps in at night. Give it a wee spray first”
Italian hire car assistant 1: “Should I still have the gumption to offer the extra insurance? Looks like they are British”
Italian hire car assistant 2: “Defo. But when you hand over the keys, remember to pull the shutters down for the weekend and run like the fucking wind”
Heading south, the beautiful Tuscan countryside shone in all its glory. But I wasn’t really feeling it. It’s hard to appreciate beauty when you have just had the monster of all family arguments and everyone is still on tenterhooks as I attempt to take over another truck in the Italian motor industry answer to Russia’s 1980’s Lada. The atmosphere inside the vehicle was palpable. I just wanted to reach our destination. My mind was focused on sitting on a porch with a nice Italian wine. It was almost in sight. Just a few obstacles to overcome or avoid.
The hour long journey felt like an eternity. During this time, my wife, children and I decided to go our separate ways for life several times over but made up each time in the fear that we would not complete this journey alive anyway. Thankfully we did all make it in one piece. But there are memories from that Italian motorway that will live with me forever.
During my week long visit to Italy, I only made a handful of trips in the hire car after that initial underwear soiling experience. Every one was a white knuckle ride. During my time there I don’t think I saw a single vehicle that didn’t have some kind of significant damage. We actually travelled on a very nice bus for a trip to Florence one day and the driver somehow managed to smash against a lamppost before we left the car park. The funny thing is, nobody really seemed to bother about bad driving in Italy. I didn’t witness any road rage at all. It just seems that driving like dodgem cars is part of the culture there. I accidentally cut someone off one day and they didn’t even give me the finger. What was wrong with these people?
When I retuned my hire car, they had the brass neck to check for damage. Not on me, the car. At first glance, the report they gave was damning. You are shown a graphic of your hire car with damaged areas marked with an x. It looked like it had been driven through a war zone – and then straight into a destruction derby in case they missed a bit. I had read the form wrong. This was the report of damage from before I hired it! The after report showed that no new damage had been inflicted on this poor vehicle. The salesperson looked confused. I had this car for a week and caused no further damage. This was clearly a first.
I have to be honest here, I was unbelievably cautious for the entire week. Like driving a new born baby home from the hospital levels of caution. But it’s still a miracle that this tin box wasn’t wrapped around a tree considering the carnage around me on those roads. It made me think, what if I did get that shiny new Focus in pristine condition instead? Would I even have had the balls to drive it in this country? Does a new shiny hire car even exist anywhere in Italy anyway? I very much doubt it.
