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Deciding to visit Ireland and rent a car is an easy decision:
The next important decision to make choosing the car rental class to rent, the answer to this question depends to a great extent what your plans are. If you plan to drive along the Wild Atlantic Way, you need a very different car to exploring a city.
Car Rental Ireland offers the option to choose what make, model, transmission gearbox, and size of vehicles to hire.
Choosing the right vehicle based on car size is very important when traveling with children or teenagers, for instance, it would be very difficult to access a child safety seat in a mini car with three doors! There are various requirements for child safety seats and they must comply with the law. If you are traveling with your family, the intermediate car category is by far the most popular choice, followed by the compact car.
The Wild Atlantic Way is hugely popular for tourists visiting Ireland – and roughly 34% of customers who rent a car in Ireland will drive along the Wild Atlantic Way, even if only for a short period of time. However, if the Wild Atlantic Way is on your bucket list, the compact car is the most popular choice, followed closely by the Intermediate car and then the economy car.
The mini car is the cheapest car available to hire – it comes with 3 doors and will be a Ford Fiesta or similar sized car. Given the low cost of renting such a car, it is a popular choice, particularly with people who are on staycations or visiting cities and don’t plan to drive long distances. However, the low cost of this car does come with trade-offs in comfort, so choose the car you want wisely.
The premium or luxury car fleet does not surprisingly get the best reviews, but when looking for value for money, the Intermediate, compact and economy categories are worth considering. Long term car rental is an option should this be a preferred rental requirement.
If you drive an automatic car back at home and planning to hire a car in Ireland, this depends on your ability & confidence on driving a manual transmission. Read more on renting automatic or manual transmission car?.
Experienced car rental customers recommend that renting either a premium vehicle or an intermediate vehicle would ideal for most trips in Ireland. Their advice is to stay away from the mini car category.