Final Fantasy games usually let you get around the world in vehicles, each one letting you cross a different kind of terrain. You usually start out with a Chocobo, then a boat, then a better boat, and finally a full-blown airship that lets you explore the entire world.
FF8 has a few forms of transit too. There’s Chocobos, but also trains, an armored ground transport, an entire floating school, and eventually, yes, an airship.
You can also rent a car.
It’s just an ordinary car! It helps you get between a couple cities early in the game that are relatively close to each other. The net outcome when you rent a car is that you skip a handful of battles and maybe 20 seconds of walking. And you don’t even get it permanently. You have to rent it. AND you have to pay for gas!
It is, bluntly, kinda stupid, but I love it. In this elaborately rendered Lumiere-esque science fantasy future, you can’t escape how much it sucks shit to rent a car. Final Fantasy VIII is filled with contrasts, and one of them is your boringly realistic financial situation, in which you get paychecks that you have to spend on gas.
There is at least ONE place where it’s kinda useful to rent a car, which is Esthar. Since that city is huge enough that it covers half a continent, you can walk around the city on the world map. In that case, yes, maybe it makes sense to get around in a car.
Otherwise, cars in FF8 are a fun reminder that for all its fancy futuristic wonders and magic, Super Happy World is still a planet where people have jobs and drive shitty cars with terrible mileage. It’s not even a haves-and-have-nots scenario like the endless parade of shantytowns you encounter in Final Fantasy VII. A huge chunk of the world of just regular-ass cities with bad public transit, and there also happen to be time-traveling witches and sometimes the moon cries monsters.