Apollo: An Honest Review for Renters

Apollo's standard bond and excess are tiered by vehicle class rather than flat across the fleet: A$5,000 on the Hitop and Endeavour, A$7,500 on the six Euro-range motorhomes, and A$8,000 on the 4WD Adventure Camper, per the current 2025-26 Australian terms sighted for this profile.

Two paid reduction tiers are published: a standard reduction runs roughly A$50 to A$60 a day depending on class, and a fuller package roughly A$60 to A$80 a day; both are capped per rental rather than open-ended. Windscreen and tyre damage stay excluded from every tier, on every model.

Branches operate to roughly 3:00pm to 3:30pm daily, and an early return or late pickup earns no refund of unused rental days. One-way fees run A$195 between two metro depots and A$295 on any route touching Perth or Darwin, becoming non-refundable once the booked rental has actually been collected.

Cancellation follows the shared thl document also used by Britz and Maui: no free window at any notice, a flat A$250 from 60 to 31 days out, 20 percent from 30 to 7 days, 50 percent inside six days, and the full rental on pickup day or a no-show.

The minimum driver age is 21 and the maximum is 75, with no young-driver surcharge available at any price to book below 21. Both figures apply fleet-wide. A full, non-provisional licence held for at least two years is required, valid for the entire rental period booked.

That is sharper than sister brand Maui's young-driver surcharge, and it rules out the backpacker and gap-year segment outright. A foreign-language licence needs an accredited translation or an International Driving Permit, and the Northern Territory specifically requires the permit alongside a foreign licence.

The 2WD range excludes beaches, Fraser and Moreton Island, any unsealed road longer than 12 kilometres, Cape York from December to May, and several named Northern Territory tracks. The 4WD Adventure Camper is the only one of the nine models the market's 'Unsealed roads OK' clearance actually applies to.

Even in the 4WD, remote routes such as the Canning Stock Route and the Old Gunbarrel Highway stay excluded; others, including the Gibb River Road, need Apollo's written permission arranged in advance. None of this governs where you may legally sleep, which is a matter of state and council rules.

Reviewers credit automatic transmissions, cruise control, reversing cameras and genuine power steering with cutting the fatigue of covering Australian distances, and the recurring strategic praise, across all ten Australian depots, is the remote depot network itself, credited with making long outback loops bookable at all.

The same source flags a hard 21-year minimum with no surcharge route below it, fuel running roughly 12 to 16 litres per 100 kilometres on the larger motorhomes, and one-way and liability-reduction charges that surprise renters more by their timing than by their underlying existence.

The managed listing sits at 4.1 from 263 reviews. A second, unmanaged listing, apollorv.com, holds 67 reviews at 1.7, and Perth is where it concentrates: a collection queue one renter likened to a cattle auction, then a van recalled for a taped window and a branch lodged in the roof.

The same depot produced a booked model swapped for an older, decommissioned Britz van missing the reversing camera the renter had relied on, and a Mercedes-based unit with body creaking under chassis flex. Elsewhere: worn tyres and a leaking roof in Sydney, and an engine warning light near Adelaide.

Google's 4.8, the managed Trustpilot's 4.1 and the disputed listing's 1.7 sit at three different distances from the depot: a rating filled in at the counter, a review invited after a trip that worked, and a review nobody asked for. None is wrong; each measures a different moment.

Reddit adds a fleet-age angle none of the rating platforms capture, plus a complaint about upgrades running the wrong way, into a larger van that is harder to drive, park and fuel. Confirm the booked model in writing, and photograph the vehicle condition at a Perth handover specifically.