Anybody know if any particular car rental company is offering cars with side (head curtain)
air bags?

I had been researching car ratings in trying to decide between a Chevy Cobalt ("Intermediate"),
or Pontiac G6 ("Standard") or Chevy Impala ("Full Size") at Enterprise (all for about the same
rental price). I eventually settled on the Impala b/c it got all "OK" ratings from Consumer
Reports, while the Cobalt had a disturbing "poor" Crash rating.

In my browsing, I hit upon this recent article in Consumer Reports Safety Blog about how GM
sold Cobalts and Impalas to Enterprise _without_ the side-curtain airbags,
and how Enterprise continued to advertise (and sell) those cars
as including the side airbags. All for a cost savings of $175 per car!

I think the 2008/2009 G6 comes with side airbags as standard, and since it wasn't involved
in the above GM "scam", I may be OK with that one.

I've started to look thru car rental sites to see what airbags their cars include. So far, no specific
mention of side bags from the few I've checked. I don't have much confidence, tho, that if I call
the RAC co., the clerk would know such detail about their equipment.

Anyone care to update?

PS As an aside, I've been using carrentalsavers.com, and
Enterprise had far and away the cheapest
prices -- I figured they must just be trying to grab market share, or at least
get their cash flow up

PPS Consumer Reports says that "side impact crashes are the second most frequent type ...
and side curtain air bags are an extremely important safety feature."

You may not be guaranteed a particular car model. The rental agency would give you a car from your reserved class or higher when you show up.
They may have an assortment of cars for a class.

scrouds said:Seems kinda paranoid to be looking up crash stats for rental cars.

As for enterprise, that doesn't surprise me at all.

My feeling was -- I should have at least as good a rental car as I do at home -- considering that we'll be doing more driving than usual, and in a big city (LA) vs our usual suburban driving.

How often do you have the airbags deploy in your normal travels??

There is no way to guarantee what kind of car you get, unless you reserve a specific model such as Hertx Prestige Collection

Hertz has corolla with side airbags