Not mine, but affiliated. The cars are located in Lempster, NH at my parents’ house.
My father has two high mileage former commuters that have been sitting for a while now. Ideally he’d like them to end up with someone who can use them, rather than sending them away to be crushed. Whether or not they are worth putting back on the road vs. stripping for parts will be up to you, but either option is better than the crusher. He’s a huge fan of turbo diesels… in fact he still has a 98 Beetle TDI as a daily.
Both vee dubs have between 300K and 400K and “ran when parked” other than the details below. Both are 5 speed manuals. They were well maintained, primarily by my father and a mechanic he met through the TDI Club forums. Both have some rust as they have lived their entire lives in CT and NH.
‘96 Passat:
My father bought this car from the original owner in the early 2000’s. Black with a couple primer panels. Decent tan leather Wolfsburg interior that we swiped out of a wrecked VR6 Passat ~15 years ago. It was parked several (6? 8?) years ago after the starter failed. At that time it was an extra/backup car, because my sister was away at college. She wound settling in her college town after graduation and buying a new car, so the Passat never got fixed.
‘00 Jetta:
This was my mother’s daily driver from brand new until I think 2 years ago. Silver with a couple primer panels, black cloth interior. On the way home from somewhere the transmission suddenly began making some bad whining/grinding sounds. She limped it the rest of the way home, and once it cooled the gearbox was completely locked up. My hypothesis is that somehow it sprung a rapid leak, ran out of gear oil, and seized. My dad was at least able to get it into neutral so the car can be rolled around manually, but it definitely needs a new gearbox. They were getting ready to replace it anyway with something a bit newer, so they went ahead and did that… and the Jetta never got fixed.
...That’s about all I can remember. For more info send me an email and I will put you in touch with my father directly. If he sends me some photos I’ll post them up here.
