Fast forward to 2 weeks ago when Teresa was chatting with Sander at work and he just happened to mention that he was planning on getting a new car, so he needed to sell his R32 - almost completely forgetting that Teresa was one of the few people he knew what it was and what made it unique (as he later told me when I test-drove his our car). Without missing a beat, Teresa blurted out that we would be interested in buying it - much to my surprise when she called me 5 minutes later to tell me the news. Now, to keep things in context, just earlier that week we had made the big decision that we couldn’t move into a larger apartment until next year after having crunched the numbers. Teresa was now planting the thought of buying a (essentially) new car.
We crunched more numbers. We considered how my Passat was showing its age. We considered the appeal of having a small car that not only was much easier to park in the city but whose all-wheel drive would free us from having to suffer through the ordeal of putting on tire chains when heading up to Tahoe in the winter. The decision was made and fast forward a little more, we picked up the car from Sander yesterday afternoon. The car - defying all expectations - looks like it was made last month and came straight off the lot. Sander, despite confessing that it was one of his all-time favorite cars, just didn’t drive it a whole lot (10k miles over 3 years time!). It’s a car that just wants to run. Through slalom courses, on straight-aways, whatever. Kick up the RPM’s and it’s happy. One thing that popped into my head when driving it home from work today was how it didn’t seem completely unreasonable to me to take the car out for a milk run. To Stockton (about 85 miles due east from SF). Instead of doing such a reasonable thing, Sander instead kept the car in his garage and in immaculate condition - I don’t quite sympathize, but I’m extremely thankful.
Once I get the registration all settled and get a parking permit, no more commuting for this car though. We’ve already agreed to keep it as a low-mileage fun car - although the idea of road-tripping it up to Vancouver for the wedding has been seriously discussed more than once.
For those who are interested, here are a couple of reviews:
Lastly, it is worth noting that the next revision of the R32 is due out this year - too bad it’s the new Rabbit styling and there’s no way to get a manual transmission on it (at least here in the US).
« OK, I’m done
That would be our new car - an immaculate 2004 VW R32 (with just over 10,000 miles). This was a limited edition run of a high-performance 240HP, 3.2 liter V6, 6-speed manual, all-wheel drive Golf, complete with Koenig racing seats and a few creature comforts thrown in for good effect - only 5000 were brought into the US. Basically, VW let their engineers run wild to design the “funnest” Golf they could dream up. And man, did I lust after this car in 2004. Unfortunately, times were a little harder for me back then and I resigned myself to never having the pleasure to own one - it didn’t preclude me from test-driving, mind you, but owning wasn’t in the cards for me. At the time (seemingly to add insult to injury), Teresa mentioned that her co-worker Sander coincidentally picked one up himself.
Nice! There was a time, so many many moons ago, that I would have sworn you’d never own anything but a BMW. Volkswagen seems to fit the bill fairly well, though.
It is also nice to see someone doing extending riffs on acquisitions and/or pet interests - I felt rather guilty and boring running at the mouth about my LaserDisc victory, but alas the wonderful thing about the web is that there’s room for everyone’s little obsessions.
Comment by Jim — 6/6/2007 @ 12:49 pm
Yeah, I still need to make the first BMW purchase - they’re sweet cars, but I just don’t know when it’s going to happen. I’m still surprised this whole thing came together.
The original plan was to eventually sell Teresa’s Nissan and pick up a slightly used diesel Golf (we still can’t buy new diesels in California yet - rumor has it the latest generation of engine and emissions designs combined with the low-sulphur content diesel will mean we should be able to buy new in 2008/2009).
Looks like VW’s planning on a diesel version of the Jetta wagon coming up, which I think will make a pretty nice replacement for the Nissan - and a good commuter if need be.
As for your LD obsession, heck - nothing wrong with that! Heck, I wish that my interests didn’t hit the wallet so bad so quickly. Being able to pick up things for little to no money is a huge benefit!
Comment by Brian — 6/9/2007 @ 4:45 pm