Last night I left my hotel to get some dinner. I was driving a Nissan Altima Hertz gave me. On the way back my rental car starting acting funny. The car started decelerating and I found myself pushing harder and harder on the gas. Eventually I was down to five miles an hour and the gas was pushed all the way down. I got myself pulled over with only a few honks and one guy giving me the finger.
The car would accelerate fine in reverse, but I didn’t think I was going to make it back to the hotel driving in reverse without getting a ticket for unconventional driving techniques. So I called Hertz. They had no idea what was going on, but they did try to help without much success. Finally, I shut off the car and started looking for a reason for the five mile per hour maximum speed. Nothing was obvious. Transmission fluid levels were fine. I started wondering if the car had a monitoring chip in it that didn’t like the way I was driving and shut me down.
About four hours after I limped back to the hotel, Hertz showed up with a replacement car I’m calling the Land Boat. I had never heard of the Ford 500, but it’s really not my style. The sunroof is nice, but that darn thing feels a like a tank to me. I am grateful though, that I do not have to drive around Dallas in reverse this evening.