About Bruniel Motor Rental

Who we are

Bruniel is a small self-drive rental company in Salford. One Moskvich 5, one reserve car, no premises. We deliver and collect free inside the M60, which is where nearly all of our work sits.

Why we published a review that criticises our own car

Because a hire company reviewing the car it rents out is not credible unless the review contains things it would rather not say. So ours states plainly that the car is inert to drive, that the infotainment is irritating, and that we got three of our own first impressions wrong.

It has cost us bookings, from people who read it and decided the car was not for them. Those are the right bookings to lose. A customer who arrives expecting something the car is not spends the week quietly disappointed, and a one-car business cannot afford that reputation.

What a year taught us

That almost everything difficult about running an uncommon car is administrative rather than mechanical. Finding a garage, sourcing a part filed under a different name, explaining the badge to every third caller. The car itself has simply worked.

The maintenance principle

We run the car on a simple rule: replace things when they start to wear, not when they stop working. It sounds obvious and almost nobody does it, because deferring a cost is always easier than paying it. But a tyre near the limit and a tyre past it feel identical to a driver right up until the moment they do not, and a hire customer should never be the person who finds out.

The one non-negotiable is the transmission fluid, which goes in on interval regardless of how the gearbox feels. A CVT is unforgiving about it in a way that only shows up years later, and by then the saving is long spent.

The complete file — every invoice, every interval — goes out with the quote if you ask for it. It is worth asking.