Getting Emotionally Attached To A Car

Before I talk much about Matt and my trip from Washington to his home in Atlanta, Georgia, I have to tell you a little bit about my car. For the last ten years or so I’ve driven minivans that were converted into taxis. But last year I ditched the cabs and switched over to Uber. Doing so allowed me to use a “regular” car, i.e. one with no taxi branding. It didn't have to be a van, either.  Ah, but which one to choose?

I wanted something with good gas mileage. I was getting killed with my last van (a Dodge Caravan) which averaged 14-15 mpg in city driving. A lot of Uber drivers use the Toyota Prius hybrid. They’re fairly inexpensive to buy, they get great gas mileage and they’re very cheap to operate. For me though, I’m just not a fan. I think the Prius looks funky, which you can read as "ugly." 

My sister once had a succession of Toyota Avalons. They were beautiful cars! For one thing, they’re huge – you can easily fit six people inside. And the sweet 3.0 liter V-6 engine powering the thing runs like a friggin' sewing machine. To me, the Avalon is at least as good a car as a Lexus, without the Lexus' high price. Or so I thought.

Turns out that Avalons hold their value pretty well. Even older ones are not cheap. And not only that, they get horrible gas mileage in the city! To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

Then I thought about diesels. I’ve always liked the Volkswagen Jetta, and I thought if I could find a nice one with a diesel it would be just the ticket. So I started looking around. Coincidentally, my local Pensacola dealer had a fire-engine red Jetta station wagon in stock. But they wanted a lot of money for it. Red cars must command higher prices.

But over in Mobile, Alabama there was a VW dealer that had a couple of diesel Jetta sedans for sale – both at very attractive prices. Out of curiosity, my buddy Terry and I drove over in my van. A little later that day I drove off in a used silver VW diesel Jetta.

A word about Volkswagen diesels…

Yes, Volkswagen got caught cheating on the U.S. emissions test. It is not as serious as you might imagine. The details are very complicated – much too complicated to go into on this blog - but you can read all about it HERE. The upshot is that VW wasn't completely disabling the emission control systems of their cars.  They just had to fool the sensors into thinking that the vehicle's nitrogen-oxide emissions were a little lower than they actually were. 

Nitrogen-oxide emissions are the ones that create the black soot that diesels used to be known for.  The U.S. has the most-stringent nitrogen-oxide standards of any country in the world.  But VW diesels couldn't quite meet them.  So the clever German engineers at VW programmed the car's computer to recognize when emission-testing gear was hooked up.  Then it would adjust the fuel-air mixture accordingly to temporarily get the right readings.  When the test gear was removed, the car reverted to its regular ways.  

But even so, it's not like the VW's were rolling coal as the drivers of modified diesel pickup trucks like to say when their trucks are laying down a thick cloud of black smoke under acceleration.  Modern diesel trucks and cars (and VW's) have been pretty smoke-free for years as limits got tighter and tighter.

Once it was discovered that VW cheated, they had to fix the cars…fix them or buy ‘em back if that’s what the owner wanted. VW ended up buying back a shit-ton of cars. They fixed those and then re-sold them in their dealerships. Needless to say, anyone who’d ever heard of the “dieselgate” scandal stayed far away from a Volkswagen diesel.  The stigma was real, man.

To get rid of the cars, VW offered an incredible warranty. As a “certified pre-owned” used car, my 2012 Jetta TDI came with a two-year, unlimited mileage bumper-to-bumper warranty plus an extended warranty on the engine and transmission.  Hey, it was enough to sell me!

I love this car!  Some people like Volkwagens, some don’t. I happen to really like them…especially this one and the way it drives. I don’t know what it is, but German cars just drive…differently…than other makes. They’re quirky, for sure, but they have a distinctive and solid feel on the road.

The Jetta is a little tight for five people (I maybe should’ve bought the slightly-larger Passat), but it has an absolutely huge trunk. People comment on that all the time. They also think it’s way newer than it is – VW really hasn’t changed the Jetta much over the years. I had mine in for service recently, and the loaner car was a 2019 Jetta. It really looked, felt and drove a lot like my own - with the exception of the gas mileage, which was worse than my diesel.

In town, my TDI averages about 30 mpg. Not great, but it’s been a really hot summer and I’ve been doing a lot of sitting and idling with the a/c on, which is hell on gas mileage. But out on the highway the Jetta routinely turns in 40 mpg, sometimes more. On a long trip I can plan on 40. It’s amazing. And the turbo-diesel engine makes the car so much fun to drive! On the Interstate, just push the gas pedal down and the thing literally surges powerfully ahead – no downshifting, no screaming engine, no drama. It just goes!  It's fun.

Even though I'm a "car guy," it has been a long time since I was excited about or even emotionally attached to a damn car. But I really love this VW Jetta. I plan to drive the wheels off it and then sell it and find another diesel Jetta with lower mileage.