I think property with a title is handled differently, which makes sense. Also, in this case, the car was simply reported as stolen and got pulled over in a public space - it's not like they hunted down an allegedly delinquent renter. Fortunately the rental company had to pay damages for their incompetence.

I'm actually curious as to what happens in the cases of delinquent renters - but I assume it involves things like court orders, or perhaps they just try to find the car and tow it away under existing repo laws, then send the account to collections.