Luxury Car Hire in Geelong

Geelong is where the driving starts. An hour from Melbourne over the West Gate and down the M1, it sits at the junction of two of the best touring regions in Victoria: the Bellarine Peninsula on one side, the Great Ocean Road on the other. A hire car here is not a city prop. It is the whole point of the trip.

An hour down the M1, a different pace

The run from Melbourne is about 75 kilometres and takes roughly an hour in reasonable traffic, over the West Gate Bridge and along the Princes Freeway. Do it in something ordinary and it is a commute. Do it in the right car and it is the opening scene.

Once you arrive, the city itself has changed a great deal. The waterfront has been rebuilt around Eastern Beach and Cunningham Pier, and Jan Mitchell's painted baywalk bollards, carved from old pier pylons, still line the foreshore as the city's most photographed thing. Pakington Street in Geelong West handles the food. Everything is close together, which makes it an easy base.

Out onto the Bellarine

East of the city the Bellarine opens up: Portarlington, Drysdale, Queenscliff, Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove, with a cluster of cellar doors in between. Jack Rabbit and Terindah Estate sit on the same stretch of coast looking back across Corio Bay to the You Yangs and, on a clear day, the Melbourne skyline.

It is a genuinely good drive: rolling farmland, water on two sides and almost no traffic outside summer. If wine is on the agenda, a driven day makes more sense than taking turns {{CONFIRM_CPVV}}. From Queenscliff you can also put the car on the ferry across to Sorrento, which turns a day trip into a loop and connects neatly with our wedding car hire on the Mornington Peninsula.

The Great Ocean Road starts here

Head the other way and Torquay is twenty minutes away, and after that the road belongs to the coast: Bells Beach, Anglesea, Lorne, Apollo Bay and the long climb through the Otways. It is one of the great drives anywhere, and it rewards a car with some ability rather than just badge value. A Porsche is the obvious pick for a reason, though the rest of our exotic car hire range covers the same ground with more theatre.

Plan the timing carefully. The coast road is slower than it looks on a map, the surface is uneven in places, and the good light is early or late. Our notes on the best scenic drives from Melbourne cover the routes in more detail.

Not only the touring

Geelong has its own calendar, and it is not all road trips. Weddings run right through the Bellarine and out at Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove, often with the ceremony at a cellar door and the reception somewhere else entirely, which is the same planning problem the wine regions throw up. Corporate work clusters around the waterfront and the city centre. And there is a steady run of milestone birthdays and anniversaries where the car is simply the nicest part of the weekend.

The common thread is distance. Things down here are further apart than they look, so the car tends to be booked for longer and used harder.

Practicalities worth knowing

• Delivery to Geelong is arranged case by case, so confirm it early rather than assuming it
• Distance allowances matter more here than in the city, and we set them out before you book
• Coastal weather turns fast, and an open car in a southerly is a different experience
• Summer weekends on the Bellarine and the Surf Coast are busy, and parking at the popular beaches is limited

Arranging a Geelong hire

Tell us where you want the car, when, and roughly where you plan to take it. We confirm the vehicle, the distance terms, the security bond, the insurance position and the delivery arrangement in plain language before anything is held, and pricing is confirmed to the car and the trip rather than published.

If you would rather start from town, see luxury car hire in Melbourne CBD, or view every area we cover on our areas we serve page.