Why I Always Rent the Smallest Car in Madeira

The hairpin outside Curral das Freiras

I rented a mid-size SUV for my first week here. It seemed like the sensible choice: more boot space for the suitcases, a higher seat for the views, a bit of extra room for two adults who’d be living out of it for seven days. I felt vaguely pleased with myself standing at the rental desk. Twenty minutes later I was stopped dead on the road up to Curral das Freiras, nose pointed at a hairpin that my car was, quite simply, too wide to take in one movement, with a van waiting behind me and a drop on my right that I was doing my best not to look at.

That was the moment the thesis of this whole piece formed itself, uninvited: renting big because it feels like comfort is a decision that turns against you at the first mountain village. Not eventually. Immediately.

Twenty per cent is not a figure of speech

I’d read, before I came, that some of Madeira’s roads have gradients over 20%. I nodded at the number the way you nod at a spec sheet. I did not understand it until the SUV’s automatic gearbox — no, wait, mine was manual, and that’s a separate problem I’ll come back to — was labouring on a slope that felt more like a wall than a road, on a surface barely wider than the car itself, with no barrier between the tarmac and the view.

Roads like this exist all over the interior, on the way to Fanal, above Camara de Lobos, on the approach to Cabo Girao. They were built for the traffic of decades ago, then asphalted, not redesigned. A car that’s a few centimetres narrower isn’t a minor convenience on these roads. It’s the difference between being able to see your wing mirror clear the rock face and having to guess.

Funchal doesn’t forgive size either

The mountains get the reputation, but the first place my SUV actually felt wrong was in Funchal’s old town, on streets that predate the car by a couple of centuries and were never widened to suit it. One-way lanes barely wide enough for two wing mirrors to pass, kerbs that appear without warning, and parking that is both scarce and paid — I circled for twenty minutes near the marina before admitting defeat and paying for a multi-storey ramp that my car only just fitted into diagonally.

None of that is a mountain problem. It’s a everyday-in-the-capital problem, and it’s the one nobody mentions when they’re picturing themselves driving to Monte or Santana with a boot full of beach gear.

The gearbox nobody warns you about

Here’s the piece that made the big-car decision worse, not just uncomfortable: I assumed I’d swap to an automatic if the manual got difficult. I couldn’t. Manual is the standing norm in Madeira’s hire fleets, not an option among equals, and automatics are a smaller, pricier slice of the stock that sells out fastest in high season.

So the choice most visitors actually face isn’t “manual or automatic in whatever size I like” — it’s “manual, in whatever size is still available,” which usually means the mid-range and larger cars, because that’s what’s left once the small automatics and small manuals have gone. Assuming an automatic will bail you out of a big car’s awkwardness is the trap. It won’t, because there’s a real chance you won’t get one at all, and you’ll be doing hill starts on a 20% gradient in a car that’s also too wide for the road.

What I actually rent now

On every trip since, I’ve booked the smallest hatchback the company has, not the compact SUV, not the “family” category, the actual smallest one on the list. It costs less. It’s easier to reverse into a passing bay when a van comes the other way outside Porto Moniz. It fits the multi-storey ramps in Funchal without me holding my breath. And on the motorway sections of the VR1, where the island’s few fast roads run in tunnels along the south coast, it does exactly what a bigger car does, because none of that width or power ever gets used. You only pay for size on the roads where size is a liability, which in Madeira is most of them once you leave the coast road.

Where I happily let someone else drive

I’ll say this too, because pretending a small car solves everything would be its own kind of dishonesty: some roads here are worth doing with somebody else behind the wheel, car size aside. The old service track down to Rabaçal is closed to private cars entirely, and the walk to the 25 Fontes waterfalls only really works if you’ve arrived on the shuttle, which is exactly what happens on a small-group guided walk from Rabaçal to the 25 Fontes waterfalls.

And the road up to Pico do Arieiro before dawn, in the cold, on switchbacks you can’t yet see clearly, is not a road I’d choose to learn on my own hire car at 5am — I’ve done that sunrise as a passenger on a sunrise jeep tour up to Pico do Arieiro and been glad of it.

The same goes for the unpaved tracks on the island’s eastern spine, which I crossed on a small-group jeep tour through Pico do Arieiro and Santana rather than in my own two-wheel-drive rental. None of that contradicts the small-car case. It’s the same logic taken one step further: match the vehicle, or the driver, to the road, not to how much space feels reassuring in a car park.

If you want the fuller argument for and against driving here at all — buses, taxis, self-drive itineraries — that lives in the general driving guide and the car rental guide, and it’s worth reading before you book anything. This piece is narrower on purpose: once you’ve decided to drive, don’t let the desk clerk upsell you into the one mistake that costs you at the very first village.

Renting a car in Madeira: the questions I keep getting asked

Is a small car really necessary in Madeira, or is that exaggerated?

It is not exaggerated. Roads above villages like Curral das Freiras and Fanal carry gradients past 20%, and a fair number of them are one car wide with passing bays. A compact car makes those bays usable; a large SUV often does not fit them at all.

Can I get an automatic gearbox in Madeira?

You can, but do not assume it. Manual is the standing default across most hire fleets here, automatics are a smaller and pricier slice of the stock, and they sell out first in high season. Book one specifically and early if you need it.

What size of car do you actually recommend?

The smallest hatchback the company offers, ideally a supermini rather than a compact SUV. You lose nothing on the VR1 coastal motorway and gain width, turning circle and confidence the moment you leave it for a village road.

Are the steep, narrow roads only up in the mountains, or in Funchal too?

Both. The mountain gradients are the more dramatic ones, but Funchal’s older streets, especially around the Zona Velha, were laid out long before cars and stay narrow, one-way and steep in the same breath.

Is parking in Funchal harder with a bigger car?

Yes. Kerbside space in central Funchal is scarce and paid, bays are tight, and multi-storey ramps were not built with SUV dimensions in mind. A smaller car finds a spot faster and squeezes into it without folding the mirrors in.

Should I just avoid driving altogether?

That is a legitimate choice, and plenty of visitors do it well, but it is a different question from this one. This piece is about which car to book if you are driving; the case for and against driving at all lives in the general driving guide, with the alternatives covered separately in getting around without a car and the Madeira without a car itinerary.