I FUCKING HATE OWNING A CAR.

And it GREATLY helps if you know some stuff about vehicles and can do maintenance and repairs yourself. 1 - you learn new stuff over time and usually wont forget it, so years down the road with a different car, a symptom comes up and you can be quicker to narrow the problem down. 2 - muuuuuch cheaper!!
 
Heh, yeah. I've owned three cars to my name thus far and had a couple more for a short while, and the most reliable, cheap to maintain and easy car was a -89 Nissan Sunny my dad got me for a couple of hundred when I turned 18. Ugly as hell, and it sometimes took two grown men to use the steering wheel on the parking lot, but I think I spent a whopping total of 40€ on repairs. It had well over 300.000km on it when it passed on from my hands, and I actually heard it had permanently given up only today. So
emot-salute.gif
to the Japanese engineers of the 80's!

And trust me, I would love to be handy with cars. I have no trouble with the basic stuff and I can often diagnose a problem (in this case I'm fairly optimistic it's just been a bad contact in the airbag connectors and resetting the fault status with VAG-Com will fix it at least until I get it inspected, though it might be much worse), but when it comes to fixing the mechanics, I'm utterly hopeless and I simply can't find the time, energy and motivation to start learning yet another craft from the ground-up.
 
I have had a light on my dash that blinks ever since I got my car, that reads "INFL. REST." which I'm guessing stands for Inflative Restraint", meaning something is up with my airbags but it's passed inspection like that every time.
 
I spent $11,000 on mine and it's not missed a beat in the past 2 years I've owned it, over 30,000 kilometres. Obvious things like insurance / licensing / servicing (do it all myself) of course, but those are just running costs. The only thing I've needed to replace is the catalytic converter - which I still haven't actually done, because I don't feel like paying $600 for the sake of some loser behind me :D
 
Golf's are fucking solid cars Jarkko, how old is it?
I've had 3 golfs (I, IV & V generations). Never had problems with them in the first 10 years...
Old cars are money eaters
... well, new cars too, I paid 24.000 € for my actual Golf.:erk:
 
OP, I feel your pain, kinda. Yours is worse.
I bought a 1998 Nissan Altima in March. Here's what's happened.

1. Fuel pump failure (2 days afterwards)
2. Trunk won't open with key
3. Tire stem on rim bored out
 
Whoo.
- Diagnosis: 31e
- New spiral (of course it was the spiral, it COULDN'T have been anything easy and cheap, right?): At least 300e, probably more
- New brake discs: hopefully less than 100e
- One useless inspection (no chance it would pass, but the deadline was tomorrow): 82e
- A re-inspection after everything's fixed (if I can gather the money somehow): 35e

All in all, yet another 550-600e to keep this fucking piece of junk running for another year.
 
Reminds me of this commercial:


The clue of the commercial is: "You can't trust old people, but you can trust a Golf".
Which, in your case, is so untrue.
 
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My car with the broken springs mentioned in this thread now has a loud as fuck muffler, but I'm inclined not to give a shit for a while. :lol:

ABS just shit the bed, I don't care about that either because it will still pass inspection with the abs system not working (plus last winter the abs system was fucking shit in the snow because it was shitting out a little at that point as well).

Every once and a while the emissions leak will trip the check engine light, but I just reset that, drive the car for a few mile, then schedule the inspection and pray the fucking thing doesn't trip again on the way to the test. :lol:0 Seriously I'm not gonna spend $300 on a small leak in the emissions on an 11 year old car.

The other car that I own has a waranty and is running great... however I scratch my head why the thing will tell you when a tire is low on air but won't tell you when you are almost out of windshield wiper fluid. That and being foreign everything functions backwards with the exception of the standardized stuff.
 
Yea my car has reached that "age." So many repairs have to be done it's killing me :cry:
I think I now understand why people lease cars with maintenance plans instead of buying.
 
Couldn't find a video with decent audio, so I'm posting the lyrics along with a live vid.
This is one of the truest songs ever written.

Thousand Dollar Car (the Bottle Rockets)

Thousand dollar car ain't worth nothing.
Thousand dollar car it ain't worth shit.
Might as well take your thousand dollars and set fire to it.
Thousand dollar car ain't worth a dime,
you lose your thousand dollars every time.
Oh why did I ever buy, a thousand dollar car?

Thousand dollar car is gonna let you down
more than it's ever gonna get you around.
Replace your gaskets and paint over your rust,
you'll still end up with something that you'll never trust.
Thousand dollar car's life was through
about 50,000 miles 'fore it got to you.
Oh why did I ever buy, a thousand dollar car?

A thousand dollar car ain't even gonna roll
'til you throw at least another thousand in the hole.
Sink your money in it, and there you are
The owner of a two thousand dollar thousand dollar car.

If you've only got a thousand dollars
you ought to just buy a good guitar.
Learn how to play it it'll take you farther
than any old thousand dollar car.
If a thousand dollar car was truly worth a damn
Then why would anybody ever spend ten grand?
Oh why did I ever buy, a thousand dollar car?

http://youtu.be/GsbJA9RM4Cc
 
BTW--Bryan Kilco mentioned a 1992 LaSabre. Around here, the old car resale value of old Buick LaSabres and Park Avenues (or their Oldsmobile/Pontiac equivalents with the 3.8 liter V6) is remarkably high if they're under 200,000 miles, because it's a known fact that parts are cheap for them, and they're generally good to 300,000 miles. I have my wife driving a 2006 Pontiac G6, and I beat around in a 1995 Mercury Sable that leaks a bit of everything. It's just cheaper to add fluids, because there's no way I'm going through the $$$$ and hassle of actually fixing it. Rear struts need replacing, and I'd imagine they'll need replacing 10 years from now, because I'm not going to do it.

Had a 1988 Saab 900, which I liked pretty well, but parts were ridiculously expensive ($250 alternator?!?!?).
 
It's not so bad up here, because it gets too cold for salt to be very useful on ice. Consequently, we don't have the rust problems that they have in, say, southern Michigan or something.

Funny story--about 12 years ago, I drove a hideous 1990 Grand Am. I drove home for Christmas, and it was hitting about -30F at night. When I drove back to Fargo, apparently the heater core cracked and all the coolant ran out. The car never ran the least bit hot, but it was a REALLY COLD 200 mile drive without heat.
 
This thread confirms that I made the right choice by taking out a huge (for me) $14k loan to buy an '07 Golf 2-door with 53k miles and 4 brand new tires (and the 2-year/24k mi extended warranty) - my monthly payments may be pretty high, but at least I can plan for them and not have to deal with any unexpected $500+ repair bill cockslaps! (and I got my loan at, wait for it, 3.6% APR, fuck yeah credit unions)
 
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