Dollar Thrifty has just announced that it will be greatly reducing the amount of rental cars it will be purchasing from Chrysler in the future. In 2008 Chrysler vehicles made up 76 percent of Dollar Thrifty’s car hire fleet in the U.S. Now the company said that percentage would be reduced to just 30 percent in 2010.

Dollar Thrifty used to have an agreement with Chrysler which required the car rental firm to but at least 75 percent of its vehicles from them. However that deal was changed in August from a fixed percentage of cars to a fixed number of cars to be purchased each year.

Dollar Thrifty will now source 34 percent of its rental fleet from Ford, a further 20 percent from General Motors and 6 percent from Nissan. The remaining vehicles will come from Hyundai and Kia amongst others.

Dollar Thrifty say that the new plans to purchase across a range of car manufacturing companies meant that it would be better able to protect itself from changes in automaker’s production plans and fluctuations in the residual value of the cars in the secondary market. Dollar Thrifty sells around 95 percent of its cars on to private owners and a larger range of vehicles should make this process easier.