Alpine Angles

During our recent visit to the European Alpine region we made the following observations.

Those desiring to rent an automatic transmission vehicle may end up with a BMW or Mercedes even though they requested and paid for a lower-priced vehicle. The reason is that auto-leasing companies buy relatively few automatic transmission cars, and most of those are in the higher-priced categories. Although a higher rental fee is not required, there are significant restrictions on where you may drive the higher-priced vehicles. For example, you generally may not take a BMW or Mercedes into Italy.

The International Driver’s Permit is frequently stated in travel publications as required to drive rental vehicles. In our experience, we did not find this to be the case.

HUGH BLANCHARD

Glendale