Random Car Stuff

I hope this Jetta gets me another 200,000 miles so I can claim half a million driven with it.  The diesel is great, gets good mileage and keeps driving like it's indestructible.  The German word for it would be unverwüstlich.  Unfortunately, there have been some creeping electrical problems, primarily with the windows and door locks.  New cars are reliable but troubleshooting things is much harder, and often way more expensive to fix!  I have been to the junkyard twice now to get driver's window motors and controllers, and even though I've had lots of fun there, I haven't yet gotten the window to work with the replacement motor and controller installed.

       

The only car I've had with more miles was my 1987 Wolfsburg edition Jetta, which had a little over 386,000 miles on it when I sold it in 2005 for $400 to a guy in Richmond, VA.  No idea what his plans were for that car, but it was my daily driver up to that time.

                   

My second Audi was a nice 1990 200 Quattro wagon (10v engine), which I bought in 1999 with about 98,000 miles on it, and finally took to the junkyard in 2013 with approximately 300,000 miles on it (the odometer had long since stopped working, so I don't know exactly how many):

           

The Audi wagon was very cool, but for a different kind of cool I got a 1993 Eurovan in 2006.  I bought it in Tulsa in November 2006 and it had 151,000 miles on it at the time.  It's still going strong in December 2019 with about 250,000 miles on it:

Occasionally it gives me trouble since it was probably flooded at some point and therefore has quite a few electrical issues.  In the course of troubleshooting one of them, I made a handy guide for the Digifant Engine Control Module cable pinout for those who need to check the continuity on the wires coming from the various sensors to the ECM.  On the page, you can select whether you want to see it displayed vertically or horizontally.

The first car I owned was a 1979 Audi 100 GLS sedan; I bought it in Germany in early 1985 and owned it during my tour of duty in Augsburg, from January 1985 to February 1988.  This picture was taken in an autobahn rest area somewhere in southern Bayern in late 1987 because I knew I needed some pictures of the car since I was going to have to sell it early the following year.  Mine had the in-line 5 cylinder engine with four speed manual.  Great car!

Cars I Wish I'd Owned (or just really cool)

Here's an oldie from the 1960's that supposedly was a great driving car in terms of handling and responsiveness.  The NSU Prinz was made back when European car manufacturers on occasion still took inspiration from American companies (see the resemblance to the first-generation Corvair?):

   

The blue Prinz image was found on this website:
https://amklassiek.nl/nsu-tts-populaire-sporter-neckarsulm/2016/03/01/ while the orange Prinz image was found here
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NSU_Prinz_TT_2012-09-01_14-40-24.JPG

Probably my favorite car of all time is the Audi Coupe GT, which was the non-quattro street version of the rallye car the Audi Quattro.  A great looking example is this one which was on one of the classified ad websites in 2019:

   

I like Eurovans, but the 1980's Vanagons were more authentically Volkswagen!  Here's a great example of a 1983 air-cooled Vanagon that was for sale in March 2020 in Nevada:

       

Keep going back in time and before the Vanagon, there was the old style bus, which was made from the 1950's up through the 1970's, and even into the 1990's in Brazil and maybe some other countries.  Here's a great example that was on sale in early 2020:

           

Cars I Am Looking for for Christa LOL

These are some of the car listings we looked at in August 2022 now that Christa can drive!

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