# Aberdeen, Aberdeen City

URL: https://performanceandprestige.co.uk/car-hire/aberdeen

Performance & Prestige has no depot, branch or rental counter in Aberdeen and holds no premises there. Every lease is delivered to an address you choose and collected from it afterwards.

Aberdeen is a long way from everywhere else and about twenty minutes from some of the best road in Scotland, which is an unusual combination and the whole reason a lease works here. We deliver into the granite terraces of the west end, out along Deeside to Cults, Bieldside, Milltimber and Peterculter, to Westhill and Kingswells, and down the coast to Stonehaven. The western peripheral route has changed how the city connects to all of it, so an address on the Deeside road is no longer the awkward one it used to be. The car is brought to your door and collected from wherever the agreement ends. We hold no premises in Aberdeen or anywhere else in Scotland, so nothing here involves you travelling to fetch anything.

Typical delivery: The road north is the first thing we look at, because it is a long one and the weather along it counts for a good part of the year. Then the address: a Deeside drive settles the matter on its own, while a west end granite terrace usually means a controlled zone, a nominated bay and an hour when using it is legal. The city's low emission zone decides the approach if the address sits inside it. Nothing is fixed until a window has been put to you by a person and you have agreed it.

Granite terrace streets in the west end have no off-street parking behind them and the kerb in front is controlled, so we agree a specific bay and a specific time instead of circling. The harbour side of the city is a working port with heavy vehicle traffic and is a poor choice for standing about with paperwork. Out on Deeside the handovers are the easy ones: long drives, room to turn and nobody watching. The other local factor is the haar - the sea fog that rolls in off the North Sea and can sit over the coast while Deeside is in sunshine, which occasionally moves a handover by an hour rather than cancelling it.

Postcode areas covered: AB.

## Does Aberdeen's low emission zone apply to a private car?

Yes. As with the other Scottish schemes, it applies to cars rather than only to buses and vans, it covers the city centre, and enforcement is camera-based with the charge attaching to the vehicle rather than the driver. Modern petrol prestige and performance cars meet the standard in the ordinary course, but we confirm the position on the specific vehicle before you commit rather than after. The council publishes the boundary and the current penalty terms. Glasgow and Edinburgh run their own separate zones, so a trip taking in the central belt crosses more than one.

## What is Royal Deeside actually like to drive?

It is the reason to keep a car here. The A93 runs west from the city through Banchory, Aboyne and Ballater to Braemar, following the river through forest and opening out as it climbs, and it is fast, well surfaced and genuinely beautiful without being difficult. Beyond Braemar the same road climbs the Cairnwell to the highest main-road summit in Britain before dropping into Glenshee. The A939 north from Ballater over the Lecht - the Snow Roads - is the wilder one, and the better one, and the first to close when the weather turns.

## How much does winter change things this far north?

A great deal, and it is worth planning around rather than ignoring. The high roads over the Lecht and the Cairnwell close for snow more readily than almost anything else in Britain, the passes hold ice in shade long after the coast has thawed, and the daylight in December runs out by the middle of the afternoon. Performance tyres go hard and lose grip well before the road looks slippery. Deer come down to the roadside at dusk along the whole of the Deeside corridor. None of that is a reason not to be here in winter - it is a reason to plan shorter days and keep the good roads for the light.

## How far does the delivery area actually reach?

Across the city and its western suburbs, down the coast to Stonehaven, out along Deeside as far as Ballater and Braemar, north to Inverurie, Ellon and the Aberdeenshire towns, and up into Speyside. Anywhere further north or west, tell us the address and we will be straight with you about what the approach involves rather than discovering it on the day. Delivery here and collection at the end of the term somewhere else entirely - Edinburgh, Glasgow, or further south - is one arrangement quoted against both addresses rather than two separate ones.

## Can you reach a house at the end of a Deeside or Speyside track?

Usually, with a conversation first. The obstacles up here are specific and repeat themselves: unsurfaced tracks with a loose stone surface, cattle grids at the estate boundaries, gates that need somebody to open them, and long approaches with nowhere to turn at the far end. A covered transporter reaches very few of those doors. We drive the last part, and where even that is unwise we hand over at the nearest made road and follow you in so nobody is guessing about ground clearance with the car already committed.

## Why lease rather than buy in a city this far from the dealers?

Because distance is exactly what makes ownership tiresome here. A car of this kind bought in the central belt or further south has to be collected, serviced and eventually sold somewhere other than where it lives, and the mileage that goes into doing all that is mileage you never enjoy. A lease starts with the car delivered to your door on a three-month minimum term, one month up front and one a month after that, with a thousand miles a month included, and it ends with us collecting it. The part of ownership that is a chore at this latitude is the part a lease removes.

*Pre-launch note: the driver criteria, deposits, excesses and mileage allowances quoted here are read from Performance & Prestige's own catalogue data, which is still being confirmed with the owner and the insurer. Read them as the shape of the figures rather than as a quotation. What binds is your written quote and your agreement.*