Car delivery in London

Our fleet on this page holds 147 cars across 14 classes, from the Citroen C3 Aircross and Fiat 500 at £22 a day to the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at £3,300, with weekly from £132 and monthly from £462. The delivery address, date and time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed, and the car arrives clean with a full tank.

How delivery car rental in London works from booking to hand-over

Delivery car rental in London starts with a conversation, not a checkout form. You tell us where the car should be, when you land or when you want it outside the door, and a manager confirms the address, the date and the time before anything is fixed. From that point the vehicle is prepared, cleaned and filled, then brought to the agreed spot.

What you tell the manager when you book

We fix the delivery address, the date and the time with a manager before the booking is confirmed. The address can be a home, a hotel, a station entrance or an airport terminal, and the time is the moment you expect to be there rather than the moment your flight is scheduled to touch down. Rent-Trip confirms the hand-over slot in writing, so both sides work from the same details. Name the address and the time before payment rather than after: once the booking is fixed, a change of address or time goes back through the manager, which costs you a second round of messages and can move the slot to a later hour.

Where the car can be delivered

• Airports: Heathrow (LHR), Gatwick (LGW), Stansted (STN), Luton (LTN), London City (LCY) and Southend (SEN).
• Rail terminals: St Pancras & King's Cross, Euston, Paddington, Victoria and Waterloo, all inside the delivery area.
• Districts and business addresses: Canary Wharf, Mayfair, Wembley and ExCeL London, plus any street address in the city.
• Hotels and private homes: the car comes to the door, so a family with luggage does not cross the city to collect it.
• Out-of-town trips: Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, Brighton, Windsor, Canterbury, Stonehenge, the Cotswolds, Cardiff & Wales and Edinburgh are booked with the car, not with the delivery.

Anything outside these places is arranged case by case and is not promised on the site.

Delivery outside the listed places

Delivery beyond the listed places is arranged case by case and is not promised on the site. A village on the Kent border, a hotel near the M25 or a business park in the Thames Valley may still work, but the answer depends on the date and on which car you want, so the manager checks it before confirming. Ask about an out-of-area address at the start of the conversation, not after the booking is fixed — a late request can leave you with a confirmed car and no agreed place to hand it over. The delivery fee and any condition attached to a non-standard address are set out in the rental agreement, which is where the figures live.

What the delivery car rental in London fleet covers

Delivery car rental in London covers 147 cars across 14 classes and 32 brands. The range starts at the cheapest end with a Citroen C3 Aircross or Fiat 500 and climbs to a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, so the same booking process covers everything from a £22 city runabout to a £3,300 exotic.

Classes from Economy to Exotic

Automatic or manual, petrol, hybrid or electric

• Gearbox: 101 cars are automatic and 46 are manual, so most of the fleet is automatic and the gearbox is chosen with the car.
• Fuel: 100 cars run on petrol, 24 on diesel, 13 are hybrid and 10 are electric.
• Electric entry point: the Electric class opens at £71 with the Nissan Leaf, and the Volkswagen ID.4 and Mercedes-Benz EQA, both five-seat crossovers, follow at £171.
• ULEZ logic: a petrol car that meets Euro 4 or a diesel meeting Euro 6 avoids the £12.50 daily charge, which is worth checking before you pick a cheaper older model.

Matching the car to your group and luggage

Seats across the fleet run from 2 to 17, and the count decides more of the booking than the class label does. Fifteen cars are two-seaters — mostly exotics, convertibles and sports models — while 98 are five-seaters, nine are seven-seaters and a single Ford Transit 17 Seater covers the largest group.

A family of five with three suitcases fits a Volkswagen Golf Estate or a Kia Ceed Sportswagon without folding anything; the same five people with six cases need an SUV such as the Toyota RAV4 or Kia Sportage. Boot space, not seat count, is what usually forces the upgrade — in Rent-Trip experience groups book a five-seater, then find at hand-over that the luggage does not fit. Ask the manager to match the model to your case count, not just your head count.

Picking up a delivery car rental in London at the airport

Six airports sit inside our delivery area, and each one has its own way of getting from the arrivals hall to a car. The time is agreed with a manager, so the hand-over happens when you land rather than when a desk opens.

Which airports the car can meet you at

• Heathrow Airport (LHR): the busiest of the six at 84,481,178 passengers, 30.3 km by road from the centre, about 45 minutes without traffic.
• Gatwick Airport (LGW): 42,775,241 passengers, 48.6 km by road, roughly 70 minutes without traffic.
• Stansted Airport (STN): 29,758,490 passengers, 57.9 km by road, about 63 minutes.
• Luton Airport (LTN): 17,770,247 passengers, 56.9 km by road, around 63 minutes.
• City Airport (LCY): 3,737,888 passengers, the closest of the six at 14.5 km by road, about 33 minutes.
• Southend Airport (SEN): 719,513 passengers, 67.4 km by road, roughly 74 minutes.

Timing the hand-over to your flight

The time is agreed with a manager, so the car waits for your landing, not the other way round. Give the flight number when you book — a delayed arrival is then handled as part of the same agreed slot instead of becoming a missed appointment. At Heathrow the drive into the centre is 30.3 km and takes about 45 minutes without traffic; from Gatwick it is 48.6 km and around 70 minutes, and from Stansted 57.9 km and roughly 63 minutes. In our experience the landing time matters less than the hour after it: passport control and baggage reclaim at Heathrow regularly eat 40–60 minutes on a busy morning, and building that into the agreed pickup time is what keeps the hand-over calm. Ask the manager to set the time from the moment you expect to be landside, not from touchdown.

Driving a delivery car rental in London on the road

The rules of the road are the same for every car we hand over, and they are British rules: left-hand traffic, right-hand drive, and a set of charges that apply to the zones you drive into.

Left-hand traffic and a right-hand-drive car

Every car we supply is right-hand drive, because traffic here keeps left under Highway Code rule 160. Turning, you stay close to the left-hand edge of the road (rule 183), and at a roundabout you give way to traffic approaching from your right (rule 185) while circulating clockwise. Drivers arriving from countries that keep right usually find the first ten minutes the worst and the motorway the easiest: a dual carriageway is 70 mph and a motorway is 70 mph, so the only thing to relearn is which lane is the slow one. Our advice from practice: book the delivery for daylight on your first day rather than a 23:00 landing, and drive the first stretch on ordinary streets before joining the M25.

Congestion Charge and ULEZ in one view

The Congestion Charge is not levied from 25 December to the New Year bank holiday inclusive, and the ULEZ zone covers the whole of Greater London — more than 1,500 km² — while the M25 itself sits outside it. Petrol cars must meet Euro 4 and diesels Euro 6 to avoid the ULEZ daily charge. Before you set off, run the registration through the vehicle checker on the TfL site: a car that fails the standard incurs the daily ULEZ charge for every day it is driven, including the day you collect it.

Who pays charges and tolls

Liability for charges, tolls and penalties is agreed when booking, so settle it with the manager before the keys change hands rather than after a notice arrives. The charges you may meet are public: the Dartford Crossing (Dart Charge) on the M25 is collected from 6:00 to 22:00 every day, with payment due by midnight the following day. The Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels charge at peak — northbound 06:00–10:00 and southbound 16:00–19:00 on weekdays — and less off-peak with Auto Pay. Ask which of these your route crosses before you leave, because who pays a PCN is agreed when booking.

Licence, speed and phone rules

• Licence: a full foreign licence is valid for 12 months from your last entry to Great Britain; carry it with you on every drive.
• Speed: 30 mph in built-up areas unless signs say otherwise, 60 mph on a single carriageway, 70 mph on a dual carriageway and a motorway — and many signed 20 mph zones, so read the plates rather than assume.
• Drink-driving: the limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 80 mg per 100 ml of blood, 35 µg per 100 ml of breath and 107 mg per 100 ml of urine.
• Phone: holding a phone, satnav or tablet at the wheel is banned even while stationary at lights; the penalty is £200 and 6 points, and a driver within 2 years of passing loses the licence. Hands-free is allowed if the device does not block your view.
• Seat belts: compulsory where fitted; children need a child seat until they reach 135 cm or turn 12, whichever comes first, and the fine runs up to £500.

Longer bookings of a delivery car rental in London

The daily rate is the building block for everything longer: a week costs six daily rates and a month costs twenty-one, so the arithmetic stays the same whatever class you pick. That matters most on the long end of the fleet — the same multiplier applies to a £31 Kia Rio and to a £3,300 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, and the manager confirms the total before the booking is fixed.

Weekly and monthly rates

Weekly starts from £132 (daily × 6) and monthly from £462 (daily × 21). Both figures come off the cheapest cars on the page — Citroen C3 Aircross and Fiat 500 at £22 a day — and scale straight up through the classes: a Comfort Volkswagen Golf Estate at £31 a day works out at £186 weekly and £651 monthly, while a Premium BMW X1 at £84 a day reaches £504 weekly and £1,764 monthly. The multiplier never changes with the class, the season or the length of the stay, which is why we quote it as a formula rather than a table of totals. In our practice, most travellers who ask about a month are actually booking 21 to 24 days — check where your dates fall before choosing between the two rates, because a 24-day booking on the monthly formula and a 24-day booking at daily × 24 are not the same number.

What the rental agreement sets out

The deposit, the insurance excess, any delivery fee and any discount sit in the rental agreement, not in the daily rate, and we do not put figures on them here because they change with the class and the terms you book under. The fuel rule is fixed and simple: the car is supplied with a full tank and must come back with a full tank, otherwise the missing fuel and a refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the agreement — no pre-paid tank and no full-to-empty option is offered on the site. Longer rentals make that rule worth watching: over three weeks a small hatchback burns through several tanks, and the refuelling fee is easier to avoid than to argue about afterwards.

Booking a long rental around the charges

Who pays charges, tolls and penalties on a hired car is agreed when booking, so raise it with the manager before the dates are fixed — on a month-long hire a daily Congestion Charge adds up.

• Congestion Charge: a daily charge, higher if paid by midnight of the third day after the trip, charged 07:00–18:00 Monday to Friday and 12:00–18:00 at weekends and on bank holidays.
• ULEZ: £12.50 a day for non-compliant cars, 24 hours a day across all 32 boroughs, with only 25 December exempt.
• Dartford Crossing: £3.50 per crossing for cars, £2.80 if prepaid, usually 06:00–22:00 every day.
• Blackwall and Silvertown tunnels: £4.20 at peak, £1.55 off-peak with Auto Pay, 06:00–22:00 on weekdays and all day at weekends.

Fuel and condition of a delivery car rental in London

Every car with a combustion engine leaves with a full tank and comes back with a full tank — that is the only fuel arrangement we run on this page. There is no pre-paid tank and no full-to-empty option, so the number on the fuel gauge at hand-over is the number you match at return.

Full-to-full, and what happens if the tank is short

The car is supplied clean and full, and it must be returned full. If it comes back with fuel missing, the shortfall and a refuelling service fee are charged as set out in the rental agreement.

In our experience the tank is where most disputes start, and they start for a boring reason: the last hour before return is rushed. A petrol station on the way back into town is easier to find than one inside the airport perimeter, and the difference between a full tank and a three-quarters tank at drop-off is a line on the final invoice. Photograph the gauge and the odometer at hand-over, then again at return — two pictures settle the question before it becomes a question. Fuel prices move, so a tank filled away from the motorway services is usually the cheaper fill.

Clean car, and what "clean" covers

The car is handed over clean, inside and out, and the condition it should come back in is set out in the rental agreement. Ordinary travel grime and a few motorway miles of dust are part of normal use. Worth avoiding is anything beyond it — sand through the carpets after a beach run, mud in the boot after a country walk, pet hair on the seats, or a spill that needs more than a wipe. If you are heading out of town for the day, a boot liner or a spare bag for wet shoes costs nothing and saves the conversation.

• Clean on collection: the car arrives clean with a full tank; the condition at return is set out in the rental agreement.
• Full tank out, full tank back: the car is supplied with a full tank and returned full; the missing fuel and a refuelling fee are charged per the rental agreement.
• No pre-paid fuel option: a pre-paid tank and full-to-empty are not offered on this page, so plan the last fill-up yourself.
• Fuel type matters at the pump: of the 147 cars, 100 take petrol, 24 diesel, 13 hybrid and 10 electric — check before you pull onto the forecourt.
• Charges and fees: anything beyond the fuel and cleaning rules above is set out in the rental agreement, not quoted here.

Checking the car before you drive off

Walk round the car at hand-over and note what you see — this is the moment that protects both sides. Look at the alloys, the windscreen, the bumpers and the roof, and check that the warning lights go out after ignition. Tyres, lights and wipers are worth thirty seconds each: a slow puncture found at the kerb is a phone call, the same puncture found on the M25 is a recovery truck.

For electric cars the same routine applies with a different gauge — the Volkswagen ID.4, the Mercedes-Benz EQA, the BMW i4, the Mercedes-Benz EQE, the Nissan Leaf, the Volkswagen ID.3, the Tesla Model 3, Model Y, Model S and the Porsche Taycan Turbo S all run on a battery, and their return conditions are set out in the rental agreement. Ask where the nearest rapid charger sits on your route out of town before you leave the kerb.

Anything that falls outside these rules — the deposit, the insurance excess, delivery fees and discounts — is set out in the rental agreement and confirmed when booking.

Support and confirmation for a delivery car rental in London

Delivery car rental in London is only as good as the confirmation behind it. The address, date and time are agreed with a manager before the booking is fixed, and that conversation is what holds the hand-over together. Below is what we confirm, what changes after the booking, and what to check yourself before you drive away.

What we confirm before the booking is fixed

• Delivery address: the exact street address, hotel, terminal or rail station where the car should meet you, named in full rather than as a district.
• Date and time: the slot you want the car handed over, agreed with a manager so the car arrives when you do.
• Car and class: the model or class from our 147 cars, matched to your group size and luggage.
• Rental length: the number of days, which sets whether the weekly rate from £132 or the monthly rate from £462 applies.
• Agreement terms: deposit, insurance excess, delivery fees and any discount are set out in the rental agreement, not quoted on this page.

Once a booking is fixed, the address and time move only through a manager — there is no self-service switch. In our practice the requests that cause trouble are the ones made at the last minute: a flight that lands two hours early, a hotel that turns out to be the other branch of the same chain, a terminal change at Heathrow. Ring or message as soon as you know, and the slot is re-agreed rather than assumed.

A car cannot wait indefinitely at a kerb, and an address given as «central London» is not an address we can deliver to. Give the postcode and the entrance.

Checking your own side before hand-over

• Licence: a full foreign licence is valid for 12 months from your last entry to Great Britain, so check the date of that entry before you travel.
• Charges: Congestion Charge is £18 a day and ULEZ is £12.50 a day for non-compliant cars — who pays them is agreed when booking, so settle it in the same conversation.
• Tolls: Dartford Crossing is £3.50 per crossing, £2.80 prepaid — relevant only if your route crosses at Dartford on the M25.
• Fuel: the car comes clean with a full tank and must go back full; the missing fuel and a refuelling fee are charged as set out in the rental agreement.

Rent-Trip confirms each of these in writing with the manager, and anything not covered here is agreed when booking. We would rather answer three questions before the booking than field them at the kerb.