A Decade of Fahrvergnügen

Today is a special anniversary for me. Ten years ago today I took delivery of the first new car I ever bought, my 2000 Volkswagen Golf GL three-door hatchback. And, as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I still have it. :-)

I've owned my Golf longer than any car I'd ever had before, and this one is coming up on 78,000 miles - low for a car of this age, you'll agree - for an average of 7800 miles per year. It still performs solidly, with a strong engine producing 115 horsepower, and the ride remains nice and taut. The latter point can be a disadvantage at times, given the increasingly atrocious condition of the streets and roads where I live. Handling is still precise, though, and the hatchback configuration provides versatility for carting things.

A little of my car has gotten worn - the stitches in the upholstery of the driver's seat cushion are worn away, the plastic veneer on my driver's door handle has peeled (a friend who owns a 2000 Jetta has made the same complaint) - but the rest of the car looks as good as new, with very little wear or tear apart from what I already described. I wash it regularly, I periodically polish it, and I'm always vacuuming and shining up the interior. More importantly, my VW runs as good as new, and that's no accident. I've taken relentlessly good care of the inner workings as much as the interior and exterior, getting it serviced regularly and having parts that stop working replaced. Nothing on my car that breaks stays broken for long.

I've had to get used to a few parts failing, alas. Volkswagen, once known for quality and reliability when their cars were rear-drive vehicles with rear-mounted aircooled engines, saw their quality slide in the late seventies and the eighties when they switched to making cars that were the exact opposite - cars with watercooled front engines driving the front wheels. VW's quality had dramatically improved when I bought my car ten years ago - a time when Volkswagen was enjoying its strongest sales in America since the early seventies - but it still had a way to go. As one of the VW religious - a "dubber" (Volkswagen, VW, Vee-Dub, 'Dub, hence, "dubber") - I have had to accept quality control problems on my own car, but that's the tradeoff you make when you buy with your heart rather than with your head. I still don't regret buying a Golf, because comparable Japanese cars were so boring and antiseptic to me. I'd just spent five years driving a Toyota Tercel at the time I bought my Golf, and though it was a competent car, it was also a boring one (and an underpowered one at that - I had to press the accelerator to the beat of Wilson Pickett's "Funky Broadway" to get it to speed up).

So what are my favorite memories my Golf? There have been pleasant day trips to Pennsylvania (including Longwood Gardens) in my car, not to mention a road trip to Rhode Island a few months after I bought it. Some of my commutes have been memorable too, as I've worked in different places over the years. There have been a couple of times when I had car trouble that brings back the kind of memories that I'd rather forget, so why bother with any of that? Mostly, though, any trip in a Golf - even when I had to drive home from work a couple of times in the snow - is a pleasure trip.

The Golf is the bestselling car in the world, but because it's a hatchback, it's not even the bestselling Volkswagen in America. That's fine. I feel cooler and more unique for bucking conventional American tastes. And a three-door hatchback is more appropriate for a single guy like me than a four-door trunked Jetta would be. I hope to keep this car another few years, and I hope VW still offers a comparable car when I'm ready to buy another new car. And their quality control has improved to the point where the Golf is considered a best buy by Consumer Reports.

Or maybe I'll keep this car longer than that. It's like an old friend, and these days most friendships don't last ten years. :-)