Oh Lord!! What have I done!! A German car!! (Insert terrified emoji)

At the risk of sounding canoe-ey, if you have a german car, fpceuro is your friend. They rly and truly take stuff back if you buy it and it breaks. This is almost certainly ancient news to everyone here but just in case it isn't... 

In reply to Jay_W :

I used them to order the blower motor based on a recommendation from Tom in his GTI thread. Their service was outstanding. 

A month or so back the Touareg developed a coolant leak. It was just bad enough to smell but not bad enough to actually drip anywhere. After a couple of weeks it finally showed it self under the intake manifold. Typically when that happens it's the orings under the oil cooler. 

I'm not dealing with that so I sent it to a shop in town. 

A little digging and I found a small indie shop close to the house called Ottohause. They pulled the intake and changed all the gaskets, hoses, and plastic coolant parts under it. 

Total cost was $1500 which I thought was fairly reasonable. 

That brings the repairs total to right at $2k. 

Somehow I doubt it will be the last one. It's a good thing that diesel torque is addictive and the alternatives short of a huge truck all suck. 

My son bought a 2006 BMW 335i. Really a wonderful car -  fast and comfortable and.....scary because that model doesn't have a great reputation for reliability. I was just waiting to hear "Dad, the shnitzerflugger failed. I need five grand to replace it."  Well behold, it started leaking coolant after a couple of months. New radiator? Crap, it's really tight in there, what with the intercooler hoses and such. But thanks to YouTube it wasn't that bad a project. Hmmm maybe this isn't that much worse than an e30 after all! Then it rained, and rained, and rained some more, and one day my son pressed the go pedal a little too hard, and slid into a couple of parked cars. 

Well yes, my insurance is going up,  but no, this time he's getting another Hyundai.