Pick of Our Fleet for the Bay of Kotor

Kotor's Old Town is pedestrian, so every hire spends its working life on the bay road and the parking strips that ring the walls. The Tabacina bays below the bastion, the wider overflow above Dobrota, the narrow waterfront through Prčanj and Stoliv, and the single lane through Perast were laid out for cars under four metres. A bigger SUV will fit, but you spend a chunk of the trip reversing into the kerb.

The other half of the Kotor brief is the Lovćen serpentine, the old Austrian road climbs 900 metres in 25 hairpin bends, and the smaller turning-circle cars here (208, Polo, Yaris, Fiat 500) take each corner without the kerb-tyre-scuffing that catches out bigger rental SUVs. Think of Lovćen and Njeguši as the afternoon excursion, not the main event: Kotor → Perast → Risan is 25 km of single-lane bay road, and Cetinje via the Krstac gravel spur is a lunchtime loop. Tivat Airport (TIV) is 8 km through the Vrmac tunnel, most cars arrive with 90% of tank, and parking at the airport handover point is simpler than anything downstream.

Two practical rules for choosing. First, pick by parking, not by power. A Golf will do Lovćen faster than a 208 but costs you at Tabacina on a July afternoon when every ground-floor bay is taken; a 208 costs you nothing either way. Second, treat fuel like a non-issue below 300 km of total driving. Most bay-based stays average 60 km a day, and the Yaris Hybrid, the most economical car on this list, saves you roughly €25 over a seven-night stay compared to the thirstiest. The car that is happy at the end of every drive matters more in Kotor than the one that finishes each drive first.