I put a total of 550,000 miles on three different 1998-2004 VW A platform cars; two of them were sold in perfectly functioning form and the other melted down at 250,000 miles because I was too poor to replace the head gasket (everything else on it worked perfectly at the time).  Read more

we’re a one-car household and plywood (or pegboard, or strut channel, or, or) is a pretty major part of our life that we currently have to wait months to warrant getting a big-ass pallet delivery for $80 from Home Depot or rent a U-Haul. We would drop our X1 for a two-door with full size bed instantly and so would a… Read more

Right, all the modifications to this car are consistent with what people were doing when I joined the VW scene in 2001.  Read more

ad’s already gone so the car must be too. a shame; it’s right down the road and we’d have seriously considered dumping the X1 for it. Read more

I understand this price may be in line with the ridiculous amount people are paying for these things across the country, but it’s simply not feasible given its role as a weekend hauler but how much you’ll have to pay in insurance just to have that (at least here in Florida).

Weekend haulers down here need to… Read more

It’s 150 miles for me, as that’s enough to get us from Tampa to Gainesville, where my mother-in-law lives.  Read more

Something about the ride height and wheel offset seems really wrong here. Read more

A dozen college friends & I went on an annual ski trip in West Virginia every year (they still do, I think? I don’t live in Ohio anymore though) & one year it was my turn to be one of the drivers. My ‘98 Jetta had not-great front tires and bad plug wires and we (along with the entire East Coast) were hit with a… Read more

yup. one of three we owned along the way — the ‘01 Jetta and ‘02 Cabrio both went 150k before we sold them off, too. Read more

I put another 50k on after this before the reason that coolant light is on—a completely dissolved head gasket, basically—sent my ‘98 Jetta to the grave.

ehhhhh older ones came with the 3800, a much better engine IMO, or at least one that is more amenable to cheap maintenance. Correct me if I’m wrong and the 3.1L is fine—I know it went into a ton of GM cars that have terrible reputations—but this car is somehow too new for me. Read more

This era of VW interiors absolutely did NOT hold up well. I’ve had three of them and no amount of babying kept pieces from breaking off, falling off, you name it.  Read more

This is more than I paid for my 2012 X1, which has more HP. And my X1 can haul two dog crates. And get twice the gas mileage.

no, none of these things are the point Read more

1988 Honda Accord coupe with a 1985 Honda Accord hatchback front clip, chopped roof, and cut wheel wells. Read more

...the climate controls are integrated into that unit. how are you gonna fix that? Read more

I am guessing this depends on where you live, and how much car insurance is there. Here in Florida car insurance is obscenely expensive and I ditched my Cabrio as soon as we got married (we both work from home and have for almost ten years). If car insurance is cheap where you are keeping an extra vehicle in your… Read more

the original clutch on his Frontier King Cab lasted 801,000 miles Read more

As a kid I had a Honda Express that would only start if I pulled the spark plug out and primed the cylinder with aerosol bug spray.  Read more

Putting a lot of faith in the 635 pounds of that 429 to keep the thing from nosediving.  Read more

I feel like I read decades ago (back when I was regularly driving a ‘72 Type 1) that VW Beetles had extremely low traffic fatality numbers per mile driven because their size and nature simply made them smaller targets, literally, for fatal accidents, and there were so many of them.  Read more