What can you do with 1€?

A1 road from Lisbon to Porto

Rent a car, of course!

That might sound a little crazy like that type of article that makes you wonder, “alright, where’s the catch?”, but it is absolutely true!

My husband and I were traveling in Lisbon, Portugal, and we had to come back to Porto where we live. We got there by bus, which was the cheapest alternative, but on the date of return the bus ticket was too expensive for us. So, we started to browse our options: train, plane or car rental. Of course we had car rental as our last option, no one would ever imagine that you can get a deal for just 1€.

After checking prices from Lisbon to Porto by train and airplane, my husband went to the Europcar website just for fun. As he was typing the dates for pick up I glanced at one of those quick ads that said: Oneway 1€. Hold on a minute! One way, that’s us. 1€ I like it!

The deal was: the company needs to bring some cars they have from one shop to the other, and if you are willing to this for them you just have to pay 1 euro. Sure you have to pay for gas and tolls but you would have to do this anyway, so it sounds like a great deal to me!

At first we didn’t buy it. Come on, one way ride for two people for fifty cents each? We booked the car online, without knowing the type, but to be really sure the next day we went down to a Europcar store to ask if there was any catch. My husband gave the attendant his full name and to our surprise the guy looked at his screen and then to us and his exact words were, “how did you manage to pay 1€ for a car rental?!”. Even the attedant didn’t know about this deal. Guess they don’t want many people to know.

Time to go back home driving the cheapest rental ever! It was a Volkswagen caddy with a huge logo of Europcar on it. Clever guys, right? It’s a win-win situation anyway, we pay very little and they get to do marketing on the roads of Portugal.

We had 24h with the car and 400kms to spare, which is the distance between Lisbon and Porto. We had a smooth and confortable ride, got to know how the Portuguese tool system works and even got the chance to stop at the supermarket before we become walkers again and all for 1€ car rental. Thanks Europcar, you can count on us!