do any of you ALSO own a Jetta or Passat?

You are correct, VW's are junk. A friend of mine had to spend over $1000 in repairs (electrical and what not) on his 2000 Golf TDI last year, and it had only 100,000 miles on it at the time. And this is not unusual for VW's.

It will break your heart and your wallet. The savings in gas will be lost to the maintenance costs. If you are looking to buy a wagon, I would consider a Toyota Matrix instead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Or you might consider a Scion XB (or XA, the Matrix that was caught out in the rain.) But forget VWs, since they're not your father's Beetle, but troublesome, especially in their Bosch electrics. You'd be trading a pain in your wallet for an upset stomach and a much larger pain in the wallet.

I have had a Volvo, a Jetta and a BMW.

I will NEVER own another Eurpoean car as long as I live!!!! I'll buy a Chevy first!!!!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ironically, one of the most trouble-free cars I've owned was a Peugeot. And I've owned a Renault Le Car, and a Simca many years ago that had no particular problems, except that French plastic tends to crystallize in sunshine. Awful stuff. But the Peugeot was built like a bank vault.

Rented a Citroen C-3 in Ireland a few years ago and loved it....both my wife and I agreed that if they were sold in the US we'd buy one.

But if you'd buy a Chevy, which one? The Suzuki? Or one made in Canada?

Had a friend who purchased new and drove an 80s diesel Jetta with a defective odometer that had stopped at 210000. He drove it for 3 or four years after that. Finally, he had to trade it because the body had practically disappeared. Brought a newer Jetta with the infamous 2L engine. This guy never trades cars but the new Jetta was history in a couple of years - replaced by a Civic. I wish VW was in a better position because the new GTI sure looks good. Other than the crappy engine, my friends Jetta had tons of electrical issues. Oddly, I don't think all of them were related to workmanship. If looked into, I think one would find that the wiring itself is of inferior quality or simply isn't/wasn't specd appropriately. I'd steer clear.

I was going to post this in a separate thread yesterday, but I forgot:

There is a Chevy dealer in Worchester, MA that is advertising that Cobalts are as well engineered and as reliable as Corollas!

Since it is an offshoot of the Cavalier, this remains to be seen. THe later Cavaliers were crap. And the Cavalier was a replacement for the Nova, which at the end was a Corolla Sprinter.

Nice try, but if I were to look at a chavy, I would look at the Cobalt. I like what I see. Hopefully GM has learned a lesson!

I also looked at an HHR; cool trucklet, but it was the smaller motor with an AT and couldn't get out of it's own way!

Based on the Cobalt.

Get the big motor.

I am not trying to convince you to buy a hybrid, particularly since you are trying to reduce your operating costs, but according to Kelley Blue Book, the trade-in value for a 2001 Prius with 110,000 miles is $6,000 if the vehicle is in fair condition, $7,300 in good condition. I didn't check the retail value, but it is a safe bet that it is higher than the trade-in value.

Bio diesel is a good idea in theory. Check the availablility of biodiesel in your area to make sure it is actually available and at a reasonable cost.

There are conventional gasoline - powered vehicle whose mileage approach 45 MPG.

Thanks, everyone, and keep it coming! I am really starting to think I'd better not do this. The Land Cruiser is expensive to run, but it's a beautiful machine and at least, generally, knock on wood, it's expensive-ness is predictable. Sounds like a Jetta TDi would have unpredictable expenses, to the extreme. They are telling me this even over on the VW list.

-jeff

Ray O wrote:

The HHR is _just_plain_Fugly! :-o

...

I am working in Brattleboro, and our boss is a 'greenie'. We were running the building on BIO20, or 20% organic diesel fuel, and 80% dino oil. We switched to BIO40.

It only costs us $16,000 a MONTH to generate our own electricity!!!!

And the place smells like a Fryolator...

It is certainly not cheap being 'green'!

Modern cars are getting more and more unreliable IMO, across the board. Sure they might not be major mechanical faults (big ends etc) but the niggling little electronic bits and complex suspension that gets clunky after 50K miles is all due to over complexity and poses more of a cost and impossition on the owner than the old cars where you had to swap some big cheap chunks of metal every 50K and on it chugged.

Unfortunately we want refinement and green-ness too so we're shafted.

I want my '80's Corollas, Celicas and Camrys back.

Man, they just ran FOREVER!!! Easy to fix, I thought they looked cool and were inexpensive.

Just like I have said before, if GM wants to get out of the hole, dig up the plans for the '64 Nova with the Straight 6...