The hire car

I had, just about, heard of the Hyundai Palisade. At least I think I had. I think I’d have taken a reasonable stab at saying it was a large-ish SUV sold in America and elsewhere, but absolutely not the UK. But ask me to pick one out of a crowd of 10 other mid-to-large SUVs also not sold at home? Not a chance.

Besides when I looked it up on Wikipedia the Palisade pictured there bore no resemblance at all to the one into which I and the long-suffering Mrs F gratefully poured ourselves after 29 hours of travel from home to Punta Arenas – claimed to be the world’s most southerly city – almost exactly half of which was spent stuffed down the back of a British Airways bus to Santiago, Chile, on the longest non-stop flight in its network.

Fair play, by the way, to Europcar – which appears to call itself Econorent in this part of the world – because what I asked for was the smallest, cheapest 4×4 car on its books and was expecting a Suzuki Vitara or, in my most hated hire car small print qualification, ‘similar’. But the Palisade is not similar to a Vitara, it’s a sizable upgrade both literally and figuratively. It also came with a 2.2-litre turbodiesel engine and given the ground we intended to cover and diesel costing 90p per litre down here, that was a decent bonus too.