The same firm's office in town rather than at the airport, on the west side near Craiovița. Useful if you decide to hire a car after you have already arrived.
Same company, different door. The Nanterre office is for people already in town who decide they need a car for a day out to the monasteries or a run into Bulgaria, and it saves a trip out to the airport. Opening hours are office hours, not airport hours, so book it the day before.
Every hire desk here blocks a deposit on a real credit card, not a debit card, and the block is often 300 to 500 euro on a small car; read that line before anything else. The rovinietă, Romania’s road-tax vignette, comes with the car and you do not buy one. Taking the car over a border needs written permission on the contract: Bulgaria and Hungary are usually a tick-box for a fee, Serbia and Moldova are non-EU and many firms refuse them outright.
Photograph every panel, both bumpers, the wheels and the windscreen before you drive off, and film the fuel gauge and the mileage. Winter tyres are a legal requirement in Romania whenever the road is snow-covered or icy, so from November to March ask which tyres are fitted and get it on the contract. Full-to-full is the fuel rule to insist on; anything else is priced against you.
Strada Nanterre 51, Craiova · +40758258611