RyanHarne.com

In the search for an automobile, I eventually decided that only a well-maintained and used Volkswagen TDI should be my goal. Daily searching on craigslist, cars.com, autotrader, and moderately local eBay listings have given me a keen sense of price and reasonable expectations of vehicle condition. Today, I found an opportunity. And it was only 21 miles away.

This listing appeared on autotrader: a 2000 Volkswagen Beetle TDI, 5 speed. Yes, it has the 100k miles you’d expect of an 8-year-old vehicle, but the TDIs can last an elephantine lifetime. Yes, it’s a Beetle, and yes, it’s the flat lime green color probably more frequently driven by women… but, hey, it’s a TDI. I called the dealer and they said they were asking $8,000. I told them I’d be over after work.

The car was recently brought into the dealership on a trade-in and had neither been washed nor cleaned out yet. It has every single option available on the Beetles of 2000, with the exception of a CD player. Given that Beetles are typically cars for women, and given that it has heated seats, where was the CD player? Strange. But, never should I mind. It rode well, but oddly slow for a TDI, and would clearly look sharp once washed and cleaned with my engineering-type scrutiny. After the test drive (oh, how wonderful it felt to be behind a manual transmission TDI), the dealer rep told me that the vehicle was leaving for auction within a few days. If I wanted it, I could take it for $6,500 tonight.

Sixty-five means I could probably deal down to $5,800 or $6,000, which is pennies compared to other used TDIs on the market. My father scheduled to come over to check the car out and I waited in and around the TDI for an hour contemplating this vehicle. I called Becky so that she could give her opinion on me purchasing a Beetle. If her response was an emoticon, it wasn’t exactly a sad face but not exactly a weary face :/. So, I spent the rest of the time waiting for my father in deep thought about whether I should make this purchase and have disappointed (even slightly) my Becky. Once he arrived, we hit the road again with his more-diesel-tuned ears.

He also noticed the lack of zip in the TDI. On our second test ride, the dealer rep pointed out that a mechanic had said the turbo was “intermittent”. Or, in other words, the turbo was broken, messed up, something other than fully-functional. A TDI without the turbo is a slow, fuel-efficient car, probably not capable of maintaining the 60mph speed limit traveling up I-81 into Blacksburg on the 6% climb. Which is no different than my family’s trusty 1991 diesel Jetta. Even $6,000 for a TDI (more like DI) isn’t worth it if you have to replace the turbo ($2,000 estimated expense total) and then hope that the previous owner hadn’t destroyed the car by running it for so long without the turbo.

The final nail on the coffin was that the interior needed several fixes: a latch to be replaced here, a speaker needing fixing here, a button needing re-attachment there. Above all, Becky’s hesitance to see me drive around in a green Beetle - and dare I even ask her to be in the passenger seat while I piloted the car, she’d need dark sunglasses to hide her shame - was what really impressed me to pass up this deal. Yes, the car can be fixed in&out for about $2,500 more, but the utility of a Beetle doesn’t compare to that of a Golf or Jetta TDI. And the 45 mpg in a TDI isn’t worth the rolling eyes your girlfriend gives you when you pick her up in a lime green VW Beetle.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Contemplative, Some Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.