Y’know, when I first put this one up on the Ride page, I bragged about having 222K on the clock.
But if you’re doing the maintenence right, does it really matter?
M’self, the lady, and the (alleged) temporary roommate practically had to evacuate our apartment in February…it was one of those things owned by a Real Estate Management Company (tm), and they tried to raise our $900 a month rent (add another $100 for my lil’ one-stall garage..) to another 120 beyond that! So, we moved.
Further out of town. Further away from work. I finally got angry enough to use the trip odometer…I’m 34.2 miles away from the source of our income (she’s gone back to school, and only working part time-we’re broke).
And the Golf keeps running. I put 70-90 miles on it a day. 3000K mile changes are every month & a half. And as long as I do that, she (the Golf, not the girl..
I’m approaching 225K now…and I didn’t even use it as a daily driver until I got good tires on in March. And yes, I’m still on the original clutch. Not even chattering, unless I get lazy..
Even if fuel hits $4 a gallon again, it would cost me more money overall to buy something newer instead of just paying attention to my lil’ Golf’s small problems, fixing them, and just continuing to drive the thing. And it’s no penance to drive it, the Tokikos & Neuspeed stuff I’ve thrown on it make it a lot of fun!
I’m sure that one day, I’ll take Lil’ Bit off the road, fix all the little dents, go through the rear suspension (the rubber upper strut mounts are trash, and the noise sounds like old bedsprings when I forget to spray silicone all over the thing), but for the moment, it’s the perfect car for what the lady & I are trying to do. So, here’s the bald-faced opinion…
We already know that we can participate in our sport with older cars. What we may not know is that we can live with them on a daily basis as well.
Thanks for listenening, folks. But I gotta go. I can hear the vacuum leak under the hood, so it’s time to chase it down…
