I DON’T know what it is, but every time I come to the state with the best driving roads in Australia I get lumped with the worst possible rental cars.

Tasmania has it in for me when it comes to my rental car enjoyment. It’s happened time and time again and I think it has started to give me a complex.

The first – and possibly still the worst – example of my horrific Tassie motoring times came in 2007, when the Nissan Tiida I was driving almost removed several of Formula 3’s best and brightest from the gene pool.

We were on our way to a sponsors function one evening and the car had myself and two of the racing drivers in question aboard.

While I am the first to admit that there was some lack of driver ability involved, the chronic understeer this car generated at even moderate speeds ensured that when I tipped the wheel left to break off the highway to take an exit ramp, the car almost completely refused to follow the direction the steering wheel was twirling.

Again, I’ll admit that I misjudged the speed of the off-ramp but in any other car it would have been a ‘that was a bit quick’ moment, a brief chuckle at the excitement, some brief ribbing and life would have continued on.

However, the combination of awful handling and tyres with the least amount of traction I have ever experienced on a rental car ensured that the horrible sound of tortured rubber filled the cockpit the moment I turned in, as the car headed not in the direction of the road itself.

Some reasonably enthusiastic modulation of the left hand pedal followed throughout the next few perilous moments, all peppered with the sound of Italian young-gun Marco Mapelli yelling ‘Fuuuuccckkkk, Riiiichhh!’ from the back seat. ‘Fuuuccckkk’.

To his eternal credit Tim Macrow, in the front, remained silent. In my mind he was taking pity on the witless driver next to him but in reality there’s no doubt he was questioning his life choices at the time.

It must be said that young Timothy repaid the favor several years later in a tale that involves beers, a trophy, 4AM and a racing license though that is a story for another day and when the statute of limitations has expired.

The next moment of unremarkable rental car, err, rentals came three years later.

This time I had decided to lob into Hobart to see the sights before driving up the middle of Tasmania the next day because, why not?

The unfortunate surprise at Hobart airport was a Renault. I can’t quite remember what it was called, though the term ‘effluent’ springs to mind. That may not have been the right name as I have since blanked it from the recesses of my mind.

Aside from being needlessly complicated, having a credit card for a key and having switches in places where one does not expect a switch, the car was mostly fine – right up until the point when it broke a reasonably critical component.

Tasmania, you see, is prone to some reasonably changeable weather conditions and this particular week played out true to that expectation.

Thus, mid-way up the Midland highway and in the middle of exactly nowhere it began to rain. Hard. Properly, Noah’s Ark hard.

So naturally the windscreen wipers broke.

One side had snapped the brackets where it connected to the wiper arm and as such was flailing across the windscreen, removing exactly no water from much of my forward vision.

The lovely old lady in the completely randomly located antique shop that appeared through the gloom, rising floodwater and my profanity was probably surprised to see a very damp human asking for some sticky tape when I entered her shop that wet day.

It should be noted that it wasn’t the rain that added to my moisture content; it was the sweat caused from the surprising arrival of an oncoming truck that appeared through my most certainly not-wiped windscreen.

After losing a majority of one’s vision at 110kph and being startled by the clatter of metal smashing into glass, a few moments looking at dusty old furniture seemed like a decent way to calm down.

I did not use the wipers again for the remainder of that trip.

Last weekend I returned to Tasmania however the rental car gods were, once again, not kind.

I had been provided with another Renault. I’ll be honest; I didn’t check the badge though I vaguely remember the nice person at the Rental car desk saying something about ‘Craptur’, though at the time it didn’t make sense.

It did the first time I went to utilise fundamental driving things like acceleration or steering.

On my own, heading up the long, long hill out of Launceston the car maintained 108km/hr. At full throttle. When we loaded it up with three decent sized humans it felt like we were going to roll backwards down to Brisbane street.

What’s more, around town the steering was so light and devoid of communication that any perception of where you are located within the lane only occurs when you crash through the window of any one of the 1,857 Pubs in Launceston’s CBD.

Then there’s the cruise control controls, most of which are located on the steering wheel except for the button that actually turns it on, which is located on the console next to the handbrake. Obviously.

And then there’s the road noise, which was as unrelentingly persistent as the staggering scenery that surrounds what would otherwise be a peaceful drive. And the was also the sound of broken plastic that occurred whenever one bounced over a speed bump.

On the upside, the windscreen wipers worked and I did not experience any passenger-scaring understeer to this point.. though that would assume the car could even get to a speed where that would actually be possible.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so damming, given the drive between Launceston and Symmons Plains isn’t exactly the Nurburgring.

Still, the next time I go to Tassie I think I’ll stick with Uber.

WORDS & IMAGES: Richard Craill