Car hire inPlaya de las AmericasHalf an hour from Tenerife South · the length of the strip

Nothing about this resort requires a car, and that is worth saying plainly before you rent one. Americas was built from nothing for holidays, so the beaches, the bars and the water parks sit along one walkable front. What it cannot give you is the rest of the island, and the rest of the island is twenty minutes inland: the moment the road climbs away from the coast the crowds stop and the scenery starts.

That is the honest way to decide it. If the week is beach, pool and the front, a car is a cost with nowhere to go. If two or three of the days are meant to be the island, the car is the only thing that makes those days work, because the west coast, the crater and the Teno roads are all under an hour from the strip and none of them run to a bus timetable. Plenty of people here split the difference and hire for part of the stay, which is a sensible answer and one the resort is unusually well set up for.

Los Gigantes and its cliffs are thirty minutes up the coast. Masca is thirty-two, on a road narrow enough to concentrate the mind. The crater is fifty minutes inland and about two thousand metres up, which is a genuinely different climate on the same afternoon. All three are ordinary drives with a car and all three are awkward days out without one.

Those numbers are shorter than most people expect, and that is the argument for the car in one line. The island is 80 kilometres across at its widest and the motorway does most of the work, so almost everything worth driving to from this strip is an afternoon, not an expedition. The exception is the north: Puerto de la Cruz is 72 minutes and Santa Cruz 54, so those are full days and better done early.

01 Costa Adeje, 10 min

Four kilometres on up the coast to the newer hotels and the big water parks. In practice the two resorts share a strip; the drive is for luggage and evenings rather than for distance.

02 Los Cristianos, 11 min

The old harbour town at the other end of the front, and the port every inter-island ferry leaves from. Parking is tighter there than here, so go early or leave the car at the hotel and walk the twenty minutes.

03 El Medano, 21 min

Twenty-three kilometres east, past the airport, to the wind town: flat, breezy and the opposite of a resort. The easiest half-day drive from here and the one people never think of.

04 Tenerife South airport, 30 min

Nineteen kilometres of motorway, well signed, and no tolls anywhere on the island. Allow more than the map says on the way home: the fuel stop before the terminal is where the time goes.

05 Los Gigantes and Masca, 30 to 32 min

The cliffs first, then the valley road behind them. The Gigantes end is steep into town with the parking above the harbour; Masca is single track in places with passing bays and a drop on one side. Go in the morning, before the coaches.

06 Teide crater, 51 min

Forty-seven kilometres up the TF-21, wide and sealed the whole way, climbing past two thousand metres. The crater drive has its own page. Take a jacket and use a low gear coming down.

Those are free-flow times measured by routing, so a real journey is that or longer, never shorter. Nothing on the list needs a special car, and none of it is reachable on a resort bus timetable.

Most car rentals on this island cancel free, which is the part of the service worth using rather than admiring. The strip books up in the winter weeks and the cheapest cars go first, so the sensible move is to hold something early and keep looking. If a better car or a better price appears, or the plan changes, a free cancellation costs you nothing. Every car in the results says whether it cancels free before you commit, so it is never a question you have to ask afterwards. Booking early is the only way to get the car you want at Christmas here; free cancellation is what makes booking early safe.

This is the easiest resort in the south to keep a car in, and it is still not free. Americas was laid out in the age of the car, so the roads are wide, the hotels mostly have their own parking, and the bays were drawn for cars rather than squeezed between old buildings. What most hotels then do is charge a nightly rate for the space, and over a fortnight that can rival the cost of the hire itself. Ask what yours charges before you decide whether you want the car for the whole stay.

On the street the rule is the Spanish one: blue-lined bays are paid, bought from a meter for a limited stay, and unmarked white bays are free. Behind the front there is usually something, and in high season near the busiest beaches there usually is not. Parking tickets, like speeding fines, are the driver's to pay and reach you afterwards through the supplier, so a cheap space badly chosen is not a saving.

Small wins more often than it loses. The roads that make the car worth having are the narrow ones behind the coast, and a compact car is easier on the Masca hairpins, easier in a hotel garage bay drawn for Spanish city cars, and cheaper to fuel over a fortnight. The motorway is the only place a bigger engine earns its keep, and from here the motorway is short.

Two things change the answer. Four adults with luggage climbing to the crater will feel the smallest engines on the long haul up through Vilaflor, so a step up in class is money well spent if the mountain days are the point of the week. And if nobody in the party drives a manual, filter for an automatic from the start rather than hoping: there are fewer of them here than in the UK, and in the busy weeks they go first.

The questions below are the ones that decide whether the car earns its place from here: what it is for, where you put it, how long the drives really take and what you need when you collect. The rental conditions themselves are written out in full on the terms page.