Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 08:54:47 -0800
Reply-To: PSavage <psavage@SABER.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: PSavage <psavage@SABER.NET>
Subject: Why She Loves Her Vanagon by Maureen McGuire!
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Volks, I found this months ago in the archives & saved it to disc for an
occassion such as this. I dug this passionate stream of consciousness
piece. It's LOOOOOONG, but worth it!
o.k; so i love my Vanogon. sure, i wish i could get up a hill without
downshifting to second gear, and i would like to use the passing lane just
once without holding my breath and putting a death grip on steering wheel
while we shutter by a semi going 40 on the hwy.,and i mind waiting for the
kids to yell "all clear!" before we pull ON the hwy. But sitting up there
over the wheels while the kids and dogs wrestle or sleep or whatever it is
they DO back there, i am utterly confident, content and happy. it never
breaksdown. it seems to consciously signal me if something is about to go.
it does break, but seems to so slowly and with warning.I feel self
sufficient and the road seems full of possibility.Like maybe we'll just keep
driving and never go back, or aliens will land on earth and choose us to
transport them(we have the room,if they aren't TOO large and don't mind the
hound dogs).Or we will return home and discover my former husband is
abjectly and pathetically contrite for all the mean things he's done and
wants to come back. To which I would answer sympethetically that i
understand, but of course, no.
I could never again drive in his boring cars, including his dodge caravan or
his brand new mercury sable, and he never let me drive anyway. i've moved
far beyond him, went out and got myself a good deal on a Vanogon
($4000)(with 103,000 mi's - one owner,an old guy that wears suspenders,works
at Volkswagon, and traded it in on a Eurovan(ugh.!). Possibilities....Maybe
we'll miss our exit and end up in Texas where we discover Tommy Lee Jonens
broken down on a dirt road near his ranch and we rescue him and he is so
grateful and impressed with my ability to change a tire that he falls madly
in love with me, but agrees to be just friends when i explain i think he's
wonderful, but i don't want to live in Texas. Or we get home and discover
gold has been dicovered in the back yard, so i will never have to fix the
leaky basement or tell the insurance co. i spent the $ they sent to fix the
wrought iron fence a kid drove into, on new tires for the vanogon.
ANything could happen when i sit up there over the wheels,surveying the
distant horizen and all the possibilities. I sometimes think about,but do
not dwell on the fact that only one thin sheet of metal seperates me from
something big going fast, or all the glass that would pierce my skin if that
would happen...We still have a drive-in movies here in Dillsburg PA. and if
i thought it was great in a pick-up, it is heaven on earth in a VANOGON.
Lying in the back with the hatch up, we are the envy of every poor slob
stuffed into a carovan with THE WHOLE FAMILY.
I took several people at work out in the parking lot to demonstrate the
turning ratio. One had a new Honda van, the other woman had wanted a
vanogon, but her husband made her get a dodge ram. They could not even do a
U-turn in the parking lot.And i can parrellel(sp!)park in any space that is
as long as the vanogon.The wheels practically go perpendicular to the frame.
i particularly enjoy doing this feat downtown during lunch hour when the
lawyers are apt to be sitting in their bmw'w and mercedes about to go to
their club or their lunch or their affairs just as i am backing into the
space in front of them and can watch their faces in the rearveiw mirror the
whole time.sometimes i do this just for fun when i am not eating lunch or
anything.
The only BIG repair i had was when the power steering rack went bad. it had
been making a grinding noise when i turned, stopped when i added power
steering fluid,then started grinding again the next day. Phil at V.W. said
it was not a leak,it was a crevice and i needed to replace the power
sreering rack."Sit down.",he said over the phone. I said i was(I was'nt), he
said "$800", so I did. I said "No". "I'll use it for a chicken coup or give
it to the kids for a fort." He said hmm, he could check into an
aftermarket - $500 -. I said I could use a dog kennel. Phil was silent. "How
about a used one?",I asked. "Hell", he whined,"as old as that is...."Look",I
said, "I have something to drive,(an '88 Fox with 150,000 mi's)that's why i
kept the fox.(anyway Spencer will be driving in 3 yrs. and no one would give
me any $ for it and it runs great.)"you check around. I'll wait until a used
one turns up."
An hour later he called back. "Skip's has one",it sounded like a
confession."they're pretty reliable,we deal with them a lot". "What year is
it from?", I wanted to know. "Did'nt ask him,does"nt matter. It's not a part
that breaks regularly, you're lucky I found one. How's $250 sound?" "Parts
and labor?" "Yeh,o.k.,'parts and labor'". So that was'nt too bad,was it? I
almost called to tell you that a few months back when you guys told that man
he'd be better off buying power steering fluid by the case than replacing
the power steering rack. That's all that's gone wrong except for the tail
pipe which I could see was going to happen sometime soon when I bought it
and Meinicke muffler got me an aftermarket. That was about $200 altogether;
and a fuel filter that I got at WalMart on Easter Sunday and replaced
myself. I love cars.
I"ve always had one, since I was 16.(I lied about my age on the survey, I'm
45. But "45-49" is metaphorically so much older than "40-44",it did'nt seem
like a fair question.}My dad,Milt, bought my sister and I a '63 Corvair in
'67, and ever since I have had what i think of as vehicles of character.
There was a'54 Nash Metropolitan, various Fiat hatchbacks and a Lancia
Estate wagon from the same dealer who cried when I showed up with dogs in
the front and back seats, a '69 Valient station wagon,'74 Ford pick-up
(new,with my first real pay check), a '66 Malabu supersport convertible (the
only automatic, which was why the little country car lot could'nt sell it-No
self-respecting yahoo country boy would get himself an AUTOMATIC malibu...I
just wanted a CONVERTIBLE),an '81 dodge ram 4 wheel-drive, shortbed, red &
cream, 4 clyndr, pick-up with a sunvisor and a little row of cape canaviral
lights over cab, and a ram hood ornament, named "Loretta".
Bought her in '84 for $3000, and sold her for $2000 six years later to pay
tuition when I went back to college. I miss her terribly. Then there was the
'84 GTI, which i aquired in '90 for $3000, and would have yet, except I was
hit in the rear, sitting still at a red light, by a 40 ton oil tanker on my
way to take my finel exam in physiology one rainy May evening,( i took the
exam and got an 'A';I always said it knocked my brain loose; no one was more
surprised than me)but still got $800 for it when I sold it(NO one who saw
the accident stopped, and the driver said i pulled in front of him(!)and it
took 3 months just to get insurance $ for "used" repairs, when they wanted
to total it) all of which led to the Fox.
But the whole time all I ever really wanted the most was a Vanogon and at
last i have one and it is so cool. True, i hope someday to have a '91, 5
cylnr with that fold down table in between the seats that face each other.
In the mean time, i am a happy american girl who loves her "german
engieered" car. I have several buddies who are mechanics who tried almost
desperately to talk me out of buying it. The obvious lack of safety features
was pointed out. I heard all about the head gasket problem derived from the
American demand for emissions control thereby taking a perfectly good
air-cooled engine and turning it into an "engineering fiasco" of a water
cooled engine (this one had both head gaskets replaced at 90,000 mi's-I
asked.
The old guy that owned it before me told me to use Volkswagon phosphate free
coolent/antifreeze like he did "and you won't have no pitting and you vill
get you anudder 100,000 goot miles from her".-He is Pennsylvania Dutch.) I
heard how it would be "an oven " in the summer. I said when I test drove it
on a hot day in May, I opened up all those engineered vents and glorious
wing windows and felt cool as a opossum come across a dead rabbit in the
road. Anyway, if it gets hot, I'll just drive the rest of the way on shady
roads with trees. I heard about it being a death trap everytime you get on
the highway, you're taking your life in your hands.
Well, I'm not ever in much of a hurry, I don't mind waiting my turn, i
replyed. I heard about it having 100,000 miles and how they did'nt even make
them anymore! Then this one mechanic buddy sized up my indifference to his
argument and said in disgust,"You Volkswagon people are pitiful! The dam
things are always broken, but they never stop running; that's what sucks you
in. I've got no use for Volkswagons, they are miseable to work on and the
rubber on 'em sucks and the parts are expensive,and they are the noisiest
thing on the road, a body can't hear himself think.(or bickering children, I
calculated mentally) But you're gonna get that mechanical atrocity no matter
what I say, I can see it in your eyes and your stiff neck. Well, just don't
come cry'in to me, it's people like you bought Corvairs and root for Notre
Dame!!" .....This particular part of his tirade struk paydirt. "Oh magod!",
I was astounded. "I had a Corvair and I loved it. And if I had all the $ I
lost betting on Notre Dame, I could go to Stuutgart and buy a Wolfsburg
Edition!" "AHHAH' YOU SEE!!!"
But for all that, when we jump in the VDUB to go to the grocery, never
knowing what might happen, perhaps an adventure, and some jovial greyhaired
dad leans out the window of HIS Vanogon to flash me the peace sign as he
plods by, I have a deep sense of satisfaction and the rightness of life, not
to mention my instincts, that no other vehicle has ever given me.
Maureen McGuire 819 hill St. York , PA 17403
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