Hiring a prestige car in London for the first time

Start with who is driving, not with which car

Almost everybody starts with the car, and almost every hire that comes apart on the morning comes apart on the driver. So take the unromantic part first.

Eligibility here is tiered by what you are driving. For most of the fleet, the driver must be aged 25 to 70 with a full licence held three years. For supercars and premium luxury vehicles it is 30 to 70, and five years. There is no single number, because the insurance behind a saloon and the insurance behind a supercar are not the same insurance, and any company quoting you one figure for everything is telling you about one of them.

Note that both tiers have an upper limit as well as a lower one. That is the part people miss, and it is worth checking before a booking rather than at a handover — the failure of discovering it late falls on the person who was looking forward to the car.

Three documents, all in the same name

At the door: a full driving licence, a proof of address, and a credit card, all three in the driver’s own name. They are checked at delivery rather than taken on trust at booking, and without all three the car does not leave with you.

That reads as officious until you think about what it is preventing, at which point it reads as the reason the car is available at all. The practical implication is small but real: if the card is in your partner’s name, or the proof of address is at your parents’ house, or the licence still carries an old address, sort that out in the days before rather than in a doorway with the car outside.

The hold is not a payment

A security hold goes on that credit card. It is a hold rather than a charge, it is released once the car is back, and it is sized by the vehicle rather than by a flat rule — a Phantom and a Defender are not the same exposure. You are given the figure in writing beforehand.

Ask for it early, for one specific reason: a hold needs headroom on the card, and cards have limits. Finding out the day before that the available balance will not carry it is a solvable problem. Finding out at the door is not.

What is inside the price, and what is not

The quoted figure is VAT-inclusive. VAT is never added on top of it. Inside it are a daily mileage allowance, comprehensive insurance, and delivery and collection anywhere in London, and there is no fuel surcharge waiting at the end. What we quote is what you pay.

If you expect to cover more ground than the allowance, extend it when you book rather than settling it afterwards. And the one thing genuinely outside the quote is road charges: the vehicle is registered to us, so Transport for London bills us, and how that is passed on to you is set out on the agreement. It is settled after a hire rather than inside the quote, so ask about it at booking.

What is set per car rather than site-wide

Several things are decided by the vehicle and written on the rental agreement you sign before collection: the fuel policy, the insurance excess and any excess-reduction cover, what applies if the car comes back late, and where it may be driven, including outside the UK. If a trip involves a ferry or a tunnel, raise it at booking; taking a prestige car abroad is a different permission, not an assumption.

Read the excess line specifically, and read it before the day. It is the figure that decides what a bad afternoon in a car park costs, and it is the single most common thing people find out about afterwards. If the number makes you uncomfortable, that is what excess-reduction cover exists for, and the time to buy it is at booking.

Delivery, or Battersea and Heathrow

The car arrives valeted, fuelled, taxed, insured and inside its service interval, at the address and the hour you gave us, anywhere in London and at no extra charge. If you would rather collect it in person, that is Battersea or Heathrow.

Take the handover seriously, because it is the only unhurried look at the car anybody gets. Walk round it with the driver. Photograph anything already marked. Find the fuel filler release, or the charge flap, before you are on a forecourt in the dark. And sit in it for a minute before you drive off — a large unfamiliar car in London traffic is not the moment to be discovering where the wiper stalk is.

Anybody else who might drive it

Additional drivers are named and insured at booking, and they bring the same three documents to the same check. Anybody not named is not insured. Not thinly covered, not covered for short distances — not insured, which makes an unplanned swap at a service station on the way home a genuinely bad idea rather than a technicality.

It costs nothing to name somebody you probably will not need, and a great deal to need somebody you did not name. If there is any chance a second person drives, put them on it.

If the licence was issued outside the UK

Say which country when you enquire. It changes what we need to see, and it is much better settled before you land than at the door with luggage on the pavement.

It is an avoidable reason for a first hire to stall, and one sentence in the first email settles it. The same is true of anything else unusual about the booking: a very short notice period, a delivery to a hotel rather than a home address, a driver who is not the person paying.

When to ring instead of filling in a form

A form is fine for a straightforward hire on known dates. Ring when there is a condition attached to the booking — a same-day or next-day car, an overseas licence, a driver near the edge of a tier, a car wanted for a month or more, or a day that is partly driven and partly not.

The number is 0207 046 0048, answered Monday to Saturday, 06:00 to 23:00, with Sunday by appointment. Season Car Rental has been hiring prestige cars in London since 2006, and after 20 years the questions above are still the ones that come up in the first five minutes of a first hire. None of them is about the car.

Questions this raises