Warren E. Avis, 92; brought car-rental business to airports

Warren E. Avis, who placed the first car-rental counters at airports after repeatedly struggling to hail taxis near commercial runways, died Tuesday of natural causes at his farm in Ann Arbor, Mich., his family announced. He was 92.

With $10,000 of his own money, he founded Avis Airlines Rent-a-Car in 1946 in Florida and Michigan with two employees and fewer than 200 cars.

“Nobody thought it would work. There was incredible trouble. You had to get all the airlines to cooperate,” Avis told the New York Times in 1985. “Where did you put the cars?”

Within a decade, the car-rental firm was second in size only to Hertz. Avis played on its No. 2 status with the now-famous marketing slogan, “We try harder,” which was introduced in 1963.

Avis was not yet 40 when he sold the company for $8 million in 1954.

Admittedly restless in business, he worried that he couldn’t expand the car-rental firm fast enough. It has since had a dozen different owners.

Warren Edward Avis was born in 1915 in Bay City, Mich., where his father was in the lumber business.

He investigated auto dealerships for the state of Michigan and became a salesman for a drug company before joining the Army Air Forces.

A decorated bomber pilot, Avis rose to the rank of major during World War II.

Back home, he bought an interest in a Ford dealership in Detroit and often traveled by air. The idea for the car-rental firm came from wanting to give “the customer an option I never had as a traveler,” Avis said last year in the Peterborough Examiner of Canada.

After selling the car-rental agency, Avis bought and sold a number of businesses, including factories, hotels and a bank. He owned wholesale sporting-goods businesses and high-tech electronics companies and wrote seven books.

He also took time to enjoy his wealth, including building a villa in the hills of Acapulco in Mexico that was popular among socialites.

“If you don’t enjoy the money,” Avis said in the 1985 New York Times story, “it doesn’t have any value.”

Avis is survived by Yanna, his wife of 26 years; three children from a previous marriage; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.