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Call a local car dealership and ask to speak to the fleet manager. They often rent larger vehicles for a flat rate - by the week for instance. Our local Toyota dealership does this - sorta like an extended test drive - for people in your position. Our friends have rented a minivan from that dealership multiple times.

A friend of mine has had good experience with National's Emerald Aisle and has been able to snag a large van in the aisle. It's sort of hit and miss, though.

Try both airport and local office pickup locations. Try changing pickup/dropoff dates if you have any flexibility...I recently found it was $80 cheaper to keep a minivan one day LONGER (8 vs. 7 days). Look for discount coupons, etc. It often takes a bit of hunting, but you can almost always find a decent discount if you look hard enough. At first when I was looking for a week long minivan rental, I was finding them for $400-500. After playing around with the drop off date, applying coupons, etc., we got the 8 days for $170 (after all taxes and fees) from Alamo.

We need to buy 2 cars in the near future and are debating 5 seat vs. 7 seat vehicles. We are considering going with the 5 seat and renting when the occasional need arises (road trip, family in town visiting) as well. We're going to start looking/test driving now that the weather is starting to improve.