Has anyone rented a unit (not from a car agency--from a company here in the US)? There seem to be a number of companies that do this, but I'm not sure which is best. Our car is coming from a small town location, and Avis (the only company with pick up and drop off locations where we need them) doesn't rent GPS units from there. I know you can get them through Auto Europe but only when you rent a car through them, and they don't list the locations that we need, unfortunately.

Christy,

We rented ours from www.lowergear.com

Dallas, the owner, will load it with the countries you request and mail it to you a few days before your departure. You then have time to play with it and load your own information into the memory. At least that is how it was done when we rented back in 2006.

Denise

If you're planning to go transatlantic more than once, you may be better off buying. The Garmin Nuvi 270, which has maps of both US and Europe, is available for less than $300. We've rented in Europe several times. Once was a TomTom. That was fine. Last time was Blaupunkt. No maps. Just an arrow pointed in the direction of the next turn. I realize you're asking about rental from a US company, but suggest you balance the rental cost with the cost of buying these increasingly less expensive units. Lowergear gets $105 for a one-week rental of a 270. That seems pretty stiff when compared with the cost of buying.