Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alexpotato 355 days ago
This reminds me of an old story about Hertz and Ford Mustangs.

Goes something like this:

- Ford makes the original Mustang (which everyone loves)

- Ford makes different versions of the Mustang (some more powerful than others e.g. the Shelby)

- Hertz had a special custom Shelby model made for them

- You could rent that special model from Hertz

- So, people would buy a lower end Mustang, rent the higher end Mustang from Hertz, swap out the engines and return the Hertz Mustang

There is actually a lot of extra detail in this article if people are interested: https://www.motorcities.org/story-of-the-week/2024/rememberi...

4 comments

This is actually what HP is doing.

They are taking a sku without telemetry, and quietly swapping in a machine with extensive telemetry and hardware locks that they can drive after you have taken possession.

The current urban legend is swapping a junkyard 5.3 for the Chevrolet 6.0 in a U-Haul truck, rent one and switch them and return it.
I guess the joke is on you if you rent one and it already has a swapped engine.
Sometimes the early bird gets the worm, sometimes the second mouse gets the cheese.
"People" could really use a number attached to it.
So... 0.5? Thanks. :)
Didn't want to party-poop, but yeah, it's mostly mythical.
I have also heard of people swapping parts with rental cars, including tires. And apparently some rental agencies will mark their tires to make sure you didn’t swap them.
Happens a lot.

Hardware store near me has a tandem axle rental trailer where no two rims or tyres are the same.

the min-wage guy at uhaul isn't checking the inner dual all that carefully.

6x 22.5 tires cost a lot more than 3x of their biggest truck rental.

Rental companies are starting to run their vehicles through booths that scan the vehicle from every angle for automated inspections

https://www.uveye.com/rentals/