"They didn't do this to make money on the fees," he said. "They did it to hold speeding down to prevent accidents and, of course, speeding was killing the lives of the cars. These subcompacts are not meant to be driven over 65 mph."
So, in other words; they stole money enforcing an arbitrary rule they did not put in the contract; as punishment for an act they went out of thier way to hide. Sorry, this sounds more like fraud than anything else. Why $150, why not $1,500, $15,000 or $150,000?
If the notice was made to the customer prior to the rental, and if the customer were informed and fined afterwards; I'd have no problem with this. This is not, nor will likely ever by the customer's car. The company has a right to protect their property, but not by means of deceit.
In 1968 I had reserved a Mustang from Hertz at San Francisco airport. When I arrived, the clerk told me they were out of Mustangs - - would I be willing to take a Shelby GT500 at the same rate? The only time I ever lucked out on a car rental. At checkin time, another clerk tried to argue about the rental rate but I had it in writing. Of course I don't recall having broken any speed limits.
What Hertz probably didn't realize at the time was that weekend racers were actually renting the cars, swapping the engine into stock Mustangs and running a couple of races, then dropping the engine back into the rental (at least, that's what I have heard). Anyway, Hertz only kept the Shelby program for about a year. I imagine they could have gotten some interesting GPS data if it had existed back then.