I rented a 2013 Altima a couple weeks ago. There were a lot of things that I did not like about that car, but road noise was not one of them. Most of the things I didn’t like were related to the maintenance and condition of the vehicle, not due to the maker.
It was from Budget, the car had 35k on it and had belonged to Hertz earlier. It had been rode hard and put a way wet more than once.
BTW, you aren’t driving with the windows down are you?
Windows are up. There are a few areas on the roads that have what seems like a quite rough-textured surface. That is where it is the worst.
I have also rented a 2013 Altima last summer, almost went off roading with it too (sight seeing in Big Island). Road noise was not an issue at all. My family managed to sleep most of the time as they always do.
It might be the roads you are driving on. Can you change routes?
The Altima is quiet enough, maybe because they found fewer drivers were bothered by the CVT if they couldn’t hear the engine. The Big Island is a fun place, but some of the roads are quite narrow. It would be easy to drive off them.
When I was on the Big Island in 2007 you had to sign an agreement that the rental car would not be driven on Saddle Road.
I was told about the saddle road agreement but wasn’t asked to sign any. Fun it was but there were times esp at night that I questioned my sanity because all I could see was black/dark.
gallant Speaking of driving at night I discovered that the locals drive with high beams on and never dim them! After dimming my lights for oncoming traffic about 50 times with no response I just went native.
@sgtrock21; Ah, now that explains it. I kept flipping between high and low beam every time I would see a car approaching and they couldn’t care less to turn to low beam. Initially I thought they must have good headlights but then I realized the majority just drive with high beam all the time.
I’d also heard Saddle Road would be off limits, but it wasn’t in our agreement. Possibly because they are rebuilding it starting from the Hilo end. When I was there about five years ago it was done almost all the way to the Mauna Kea turnoff, and several miles west from there were underway. They aren’t just widening the existing road, but building a completely new one. The old stretch that hadn’t been improved was comically narrow, and that was after it had been widened years ago. It was originally just one lane. To widen it they just added about four feet of asphalt on each side. It was sagging and dipping every which way.
We used it once to get back to the airport, and rode a van up it on a tour group to the top of Mauna Kea, which was about twenty degrees and had two feet of snow from the previous two days. It was cold up there, but watching the sun set from up there was amazing. For anyone going to the Big Island, this is highly recommended. I would have made the trip just for that, but had a lovely time on the rest of the island, too. Other than the built up bits of the Kona Coast (mostly tacky), it feels much more rural than the more touristy islands. And you are reminded regularly that this is volcanically active, as the landscape is striped by lava flows of various ages. Our hotel was in the middle of a flow that was a couple of hundred years old, but nothing much was growing in it yet and you could have told me it was ten years old and I would have believed you.