Booked A Rental Car: Which Car Do I Get?

Interesting for inexperienced rental car drivers: You have booked a certain vehicle class, but do not know exactly which vehicle you will get. With all major car rental companies, you only book one vehicle category and not a specific car. So you never know exactly whether the vehicle request will be fulfilled. Frequently, in a positive way, so-called “upgrades” occur with car rental companies: In the booked class, eg in the “Golf” class, there is no longer a vehicle available. Then you get a vehicle from the next higher category (here eg Audi A3) for the price of the booked category. Upgrades from the Golf to the 7 Series BMW are also possible.

So that you can assess which classes are worth booking, I have put together a selection of a few categories and vehicles in which I have rented a large number of vehicles in recent years. The classes are designated by all major rental companies with so-called “snipcodes”, a four-digit combination of letters. “CPMR”, the class in which Sixt, for example, has the Audi A3 or 1-series BMW, means: C = Compact, P = premium engine, M = manual shift, R = with air conditioning
For the rest, we always recommend a comparison of all providers instead of booking directly with a landlord.

Table of Contents

compact class

CLMR: (VW Golf) Preserved vehicles: Often VW Golf Diesel (1.6 TDI and 2.0 TDI) with navigation system, often Audi A3 (1.6 TDI and 2.0 TDI) or BMW 1 Series. If things go badly, you can also get a Ford Focus petrol (1.6).
CPMR: (Audi A3 / BMW 1 Series) Vehicles received: Almost always Audi A3 (1.6 TDI and 2.0 TDI) or 1-series BMW as diesel. A3s almost always have sat nav and good equipment on board. If things are going badly, you can also get a 116i from BMW, but more often a 116d, 118d or even 120d. 1-series BMWs are almost always four-door, A3s often only two-door.

middle and upper class

ILMR (VW Passat) Vehicles received: VW Passat 2.0 TDI, Ford Focus petrol, Ford Mondeo diesel
FDMR(BMW 3 Series Sedan) Preserved vehicles: Audi A4 station wagon 2.0 TDI with navigation system, Mercedes Benz E220CDI automatic (actually LDAR!), Audi A6 3.0 TDI automatic (actually LDAR!)