Friends do not let friends buy Volkswagons

[Xist]

I just thought that he wanted a significantly newer car than mine, but he wants a new one! I think that I had mentioned this to him: Make It Happen Mondays: Dream Car - daveramsey.com I read that a week or two ago and wanted to bring it up here. There are eight people on here with cars from 2,015 and fifty-two 2,014s, but 388 cars from 2,000. He [gave] many of the usual excuses for a new car--you just buy someone else's problems, you end up purchasing a new car through repairs, etc.

I have bought seven cars. One hit an elk, one hit a pickup, and one hit a Harley--none of those were my fault, and undoubtedly, a new car still would have been totaled. Insurance replaced two of my cars, the only two that had comprehensive. The others cost $2,500-$3,400.

I loved my Prelude, but I spent too much on repairs, $2,500 for the car, $2,500 in repairs in less than four years, and then the same amount in just a few months.

I should have been better off making payments on a $7,000 car, but I made many mistakes with my first car, and received some very bad advice.

Thanks, Mom!

The MSRP for my HX was $13,944. I did not have a job when I bought my car and it was two years before I had a stable one, but Dad gave me $2,500.

Had I used the money as a down payment, I would have owed $11,444, and since I did not have a credit history or a job, I cannot expect to have obtained a better interest rate than what Dave Ramsay states to be the average: 9.6%. Then my monthly payment would have been $240.90.

$240.90 * 48 = $11,563,20. After four years, I would have still had one year's payments. Except, how much would comprehensive insurance cost me instead of liability? Also, I paid five thousand in repairs, the Civic would have cost me an additional $6,563.20, roughly what it was worth?

When I finally had stable work, I was struggling with credit card debt. My parents convinced me to get a credit card when I started college to pay for my textbooks. I should have known better than accepting the first offer, it was terrible!

I did not pay off my credit cards until several years later, when I joined the Army. Since I was always paying interest, I did not always have the money to make repairs, which became more expensive later.

My coworker is twenty and I do not want him getting into so much debt this early in his life, but I told him that I would try to not discuss it further.

[oil pan 4]

Mien bug has been a disaster in the snow.
Need to off load it before I encounter a real winter and I tear off whatever is still left under there, tear off the front grill and run it over and rip out what ever wiring is still left on the under side.
I hate to say it, but I have had both my Camaro and suburban both 2wd in Maine during the winter and they did as expected for rear wheel drive vehicles. No where near a disaster.
The bug has been so bad, I almost went out in a foot of snow in single digit temperatures to resurrect my Camaro that has been parked since before I joined here, hence the reason I don't have a fuel log for it. I have done this before with the camaro, last resurrection it sat for 3 years never moved in maine and I dug it out of 3 feet of snow to put it back on the road in feburary of 2006.

With a front wheel drive car you have certain expectations after driving everything from buicks to Toyotas in the snow. By far my VW has been the worst of them all. I was not expecting that at all, I expected the "german engineered" machine to be one of the better FWD cars in the winter.

Its great on dry and wet road. The anti locks must have been developed on the Nuremburg ring during a monsoon.

I had a Toyota [the US equivalent of a camry] in northern japan during a cataclysmic winter where we got something like 200 inches of snow. And I broke a CV boot.
I would put it in 2nd gear, redline the rev counter and let the clutch out hard to ram snow out of my way then whatever snow I couldn't ram through I just sledded over and broke a single CV boot, then because it was the middle of winter I waited a month to fix it and then that next fall I was changing the clutch. I cleaned and repacked the CV and replaced the boot reused the old bearings and all.

Had that been a VW, there is no way it would have made it past the 1st week of real winter there.

[Frank Lee]

What is so fundamentally bad about it? Low ground clearance? Wheel/tire package inappropriate for snow?

[redpoint5]

My '69 Beetle wanted to swap ends while applying heavy braking at high speed on a steep downhill gravel road. It never did swap ends, but not from lack of trying. It seems the bug wanted to have the engine up front, and do the steering from the rear!

I enjoyed the go-cart style handling of the car, but the brakes were pretty terrible.

[user removed]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...which is *why* a buddy of mine always parked his VW'bug with one rear wheel 'on top' of a cement curb block at work, making it easier to crawl under (when necessary) to work on if/when it wouldn't start.

It was an "after hours" private club, right next to the railroad tracks. Back then the only place you could have a mixed drink in Va was to bring your own bottle to a private club, mostly after midnight.

I could easily push start the bug under normal circumstances without any help. Of course the starting issue was intermittent and we all know "intermittent" means raining, in a pothole infested, barely gravel covered excuse for a place to park at 3 AM.

regards
mech

[jcp123]

My parents leased two VWs for five years, a Beetle 1.8t and a Passat V6 4motion wagon. The Passat ended up being one of the most reliable cars ever to grace the household, as well as setting other benchmarks which 15 years later, other midsize cars struggle to meet. The Beetle was the least reliable car I have ever seen.

The Toyota Sienna my Ma got to replace the Beetle ended up being nearly as bad and was traded with only 19k miles on it. My Toyota Echo, on the other hand, had its first hard part (VVT solenoid/oil control valve/whatever you call it) replaced just yesterday. It has 249.600miles on it. Hard, HARD miles if the general condition of the car is any guide.

Can't count on a brand to be stupid reliable or to be unreliable, either.

As a German speaker, I'd like to take a moment and remind everyone that it's VolkswagEn, not VolkswagOn. [/jerk moment]

[Xist]

Wolkswagen?

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

What is so fundamentally bad about it? Low ground clearance? Wheel/tire package inappropriate for snow?

Its lower to the ground. It has like new yoko avid ascend tires.
The main problem is the traction system beyond the tires. I cant really ever turn off the traction control, it has an "off" button that makes it less active. The tires spin on snow, and the anti lock brake system kicks on and tries to stop the spinning wheel and send power to the planted one, with disastrous results.

The same tires are on our Hyundai and they are 2 years older and more than half warn out. It does fine in the snow. Turn the traction control off and its really off. You are left to the physics of an open fwd diff and that's not so bad.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

My '69 Beetle wanted to swap ends while applying heavy braking at high speed on a steep downhill gravel road. It never did swap ends

Yeah they fixed that in 2000. They fixed dry/wet paved and dirt road braking. As long as you are not driving on mud with the consistency of pudding it will stop and not try to flip around in the process.

[solarguy]

Put some honest to god snow tires on the beetle and you'll do fine.

"all season" tires generally suck on snow and ice.

Blizzak's are the bomb...

Not quite as good as 4wd for going, better than 4wd for stopping.