theneild
New member
The buyback has not been an easy tale for me.
I own a 2010 VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI with a 6 speed manual transmission. (Manual, diesel, wagon)
My registration ran out in November 2016, so I didn't bother re-registering for a few reasons:
1. I didn't want to buy a year's worth of registration for a car that I could be giving up in a few months.
2. My car has a bad EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve which is throwing a check engine light.
3. My car will not pass emissions testing in the county I live in (Portland, OR) with a check engine light.
4. Replacing the EGR valve costs ~$4000, whereas deleting the egr valve costs ~$1200, but with no egr, I cannot pass emissions testing.
So, my thought was to sell back the car, which I bought for $13,000 in 2014, knowing VW would give me about that in the buyback. So I filled out all the proper paperwork and waited for the lawyers. When the registration ran out at the end of November 2016 I stopped driving the car and took the insurance off the car because it was just parked safely in my driveway. Once I took the insurance off the car, my bank (who I was paying for the loan on this car) called me up and said they will take back the car if it doesn't have insurance. So I decided to pay off the loan, with only a few thousand left, knowing that I will get all this money back from the settlement.
Then the call came, four months after filling out the paperwork. The appointment for my inspection with some random adjudicator tasked to do this job. When the day came, I pulled in to the joint Hyundai/VW dealership here in Portland, OR, thinking that this is the last time I will drive a manual diesel wagon.
But no. It was not meant to be.
First problem:
I removed the bluetooth radio the day before because I wanted to find a way to use it in my 2004 VW Passat (which was built way before bluetooth). The inspector said they cannot accept a car with no radio because it implies "intentional stripping". I was only a little bit upset. She said she would take the car with any stereo, it doesn't have to work as long as it is in the correct place, and I could come back anytime that day. So I scrambled. I looked on the forums to find a way to put that stereo in my Passat, with everyone telling me I need special tools to remove that stereo. Knowing my luck I would probably ruin more than just the OEM stereo removing it, so I put the correct bluetooth stereo back in the manual diesel wagon and drove back to the Hyundai-I mean Volkswagen dealership to meet my adjudicator again.
Second problem:
Upon going back to see my adjudicator (let's call her Kristie) Kristie again, she starts looking at the paperwork and realizes that I no longer have a loan on the car, but the original paperwork I filled out months ago says I do have a loan. She calls some kind of supervisor somewhere, waits on hold for about 5 minutes. The supervisor tells her that I need to resend my paperwork. I need to pretty much start from the beginning otherwise this won't work out.
I am a very understanding and patient person. My wife thinks I am too understanding. I empathize with all kinds of people. I saw Kristie, did a quick mental breakdown of her situation and knew she could do absolutely nothing for me.
So I left the Kia-I mean Hyundai dealership a little bit dejected. I had spent a lot of time working this out, but the whole time I knew that I would be receiving basically what I paid for this car for my troubles. I was not utterly despondent yet. I was holding onto a glimmer of hope, knowing that for the first time ever I would be able to tell people that I drove a car for free (other than fuel and basic maintenance costs) for two years. That's the holy grail of car ownership, right?
A few days after my failed appointment, I start the paperwork trail with the claim settlement company again. I fill everything out properly, scan the clean title, scan the registration, scan my driver's license. A few days pass and I receive an email from the adjudicators.
They tell me my paperwork is incorrect.
First problem:
The manual diesel wagon is jointly owned by me and my wife. And when I scanned our drivers licenses, I attached my drivers license photo to my wife's information and vice versa.
Second problem:
The registration is expired. (Remember?)
So I call our great friends at the Volkswagen Group of America TDI Settlement Support Team.
I wait on hold for about five minutes.
Finally, my new adjudicator comes on the line, let's call him Charles. I tell him my claim number, and he tells me what I have done wrong. I tell him that if he looks at the photos of the drivers' licenses I have scanned with human eyes, he will realize that they do in fact match the names of the owners on the title. I then tell him that I have already gone through the whole paperwork process just a few months ago, and ask him why I cannot just jump back to the stage I was at before; ready for my appointment.
Charles tells me that the car must be registered for the buyback to take place. I am a little frustrated here, knowing I have gone through this process in the past. I then proceed to tell him that I cannot register this car where I currently reside for one specific reason:
"3. My car will not pass emissions testing in the county I live in (Portland, OR) with a check engine light."
...
At this point, I have realized the mythical stories people tell of manual diesel wagons are exactly that; myth. This creature is too great for our world. I hear in my head the spaceship like sounds the Audi R18 TDI's make with their turbo v-6 engines, and how I will never hear that again. I think about the pondering, immortal diesel Mercedes wagons of old. I think about a car that has 230 pounds-feet of torque and instead of powering it with fossil fuel, I fill the tank with free used cooking oil I just fried 20 chickens in (I am a chef!) I think about how just days before the registration ran out on this car I was bombing it around on mountain passes breaking 120 miles an hour. It's almost as if the powers at be were doing everything they can to stop me from having the great joy of driving a car that can maintain 40+ miles per gallon when i'm driving it over 100 miles an hour.
I think about the scandals the Volkswagen group has gone through in the past. I think about Ralph Nader and how he told us all the Beetle was "Unsafe at Any Speed". I think about the Sport Quattro, and how it was too fast and spectators could die. I thought about the big Audi trans-am cars with their all wheel drive and how they were banned because they were too good. I think about the 60 minutes story of how Audi's have "unintended acceleration" and will pin you to your garage door. I think of Ferdinand Piech, how he pushed everyone around him create a better product. I don't wish to be an engineer under him, but those people created some of the internal combustion engine's greatest hits (Veyron, the R8, Phaeton, the quattro system, Le Mans winners for decades, and the 2.0TDI).
...
Charles tells me that the car will pass testing, and that I just need to tell the emissions testing office that it is part of a legal settlement. I ask Charles if they will reimburse me for the registration fees. He tells me they will. I don't believe him.
So now, a month has passed since my first failed appointment. I have not registered the car. I haven't made the time. The car has been unregistered for more than 90 days so I need to go to the DMV and wait in line and fill out paperwork and pay a fee, just go to go a different smog testing station, wait in line, pay the fee and fill out paperwork.
But today, after looking at what my options are for a replacement car, I have fully realized that I will never find a car that is anything like this ever again. Nothing compares. No wagon I can buy with a manual transmission will ever reach 45 MPG. Sure I could buy an electric. It's not the same. An electric car is a computer; the future in it's infancy. A diesel motor is a relic. A relic that has been fully realized by man and evolved as far as man can take it.
I have decided that I want to keep this manual diesel wagon. As a rational person, I have figured out that the amount of time and effort I have put into this car that i'm not even driving has been extraordinary. It's almost as if the car is asking me for another chance.
I'm ready to give it another chance. No car is perfect. This car destroys our environment. That bothers me. But no human is perfect. No matter how hard you try to be the greatest human specimen that a human could possibly be, you will fail at something. Those failures are what makes humans so beautiful. No computer with an electric motor can understand this. Internal combustion motors are living, breathing creatures just like me.
Neil Davidson
April 19, 2017
I own a 2010 VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI with a 6 speed manual transmission. (Manual, diesel, wagon)
My registration ran out in November 2016, so I didn't bother re-registering for a few reasons:
1. I didn't want to buy a year's worth of registration for a car that I could be giving up in a few months.
2. My car has a bad EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve which is throwing a check engine light.
3. My car will not pass emissions testing in the county I live in (Portland, OR) with a check engine light.
4. Replacing the EGR valve costs ~$4000, whereas deleting the egr valve costs ~$1200, but with no egr, I cannot pass emissions testing.
So, my thought was to sell back the car, which I bought for $13,000 in 2014, knowing VW would give me about that in the buyback. So I filled out all the proper paperwork and waited for the lawyers. When the registration ran out at the end of November 2016 I stopped driving the car and took the insurance off the car because it was just parked safely in my driveway. Once I took the insurance off the car, my bank (who I was paying for the loan on this car) called me up and said they will take back the car if it doesn't have insurance. So I decided to pay off the loan, with only a few thousand left, knowing that I will get all this money back from the settlement.
Then the call came, four months after filling out the paperwork. The appointment for my inspection with some random adjudicator tasked to do this job. When the day came, I pulled in to the joint Hyundai/VW dealership here in Portland, OR, thinking that this is the last time I will drive a manual diesel wagon.
But no. It was not meant to be.
First problem:
I removed the bluetooth radio the day before because I wanted to find a way to use it in my 2004 VW Passat (which was built way before bluetooth). The inspector said they cannot accept a car with no radio because it implies "intentional stripping". I was only a little bit upset. She said she would take the car with any stereo, it doesn't have to work as long as it is in the correct place, and I could come back anytime that day. So I scrambled. I looked on the forums to find a way to put that stereo in my Passat, with everyone telling me I need special tools to remove that stereo. Knowing my luck I would probably ruin more than just the OEM stereo removing it, so I put the correct bluetooth stereo back in the manual diesel wagon and drove back to the Hyundai-I mean Volkswagen dealership to meet my adjudicator again.
Second problem:
Upon going back to see my adjudicator (let's call her Kristie) Kristie again, she starts looking at the paperwork and realizes that I no longer have a loan on the car, but the original paperwork I filled out months ago says I do have a loan. She calls some kind of supervisor somewhere, waits on hold for about 5 minutes. The supervisor tells her that I need to resend my paperwork. I need to pretty much start from the beginning otherwise this won't work out.
I am a very understanding and patient person. My wife thinks I am too understanding. I empathize with all kinds of people. I saw Kristie, did a quick mental breakdown of her situation and knew she could do absolutely nothing for me.
So I left the Kia-I mean Hyundai dealership a little bit dejected. I had spent a lot of time working this out, but the whole time I knew that I would be receiving basically what I paid for this car for my troubles. I was not utterly despondent yet. I was holding onto a glimmer of hope, knowing that for the first time ever I would be able to tell people that I drove a car for free (other than fuel and basic maintenance costs) for two years. That's the holy grail of car ownership, right?
A few days after my failed appointment, I start the paperwork trail with the claim settlement company again. I fill everything out properly, scan the clean title, scan the registration, scan my driver's license. A few days pass and I receive an email from the adjudicators.
They tell me my paperwork is incorrect.
First problem:
The manual diesel wagon is jointly owned by me and my wife. And when I scanned our drivers licenses, I attached my drivers license photo to my wife's information and vice versa.
Second problem:
The registration is expired. (Remember?)
So I call our great friends at the Volkswagen Group of America TDI Settlement Support Team.
I wait on hold for about five minutes.
Finally, my new adjudicator comes on the line, let's call him Charles. I tell him my claim number, and he tells me what I have done wrong. I tell him that if he looks at the photos of the drivers' licenses I have scanned with human eyes, he will realize that they do in fact match the names of the owners on the title. I then tell him that I have already gone through the whole paperwork process just a few months ago, and ask him why I cannot just jump back to the stage I was at before; ready for my appointment.
Charles tells me that the car must be registered for the buyback to take place. I am a little frustrated here, knowing I have gone through this process in the past. I then proceed to tell him that I cannot register this car where I currently reside for one specific reason:
"3. My car will not pass emissions testing in the county I live in (Portland, OR) with a check engine light."
...
At this point, I have realized the mythical stories people tell of manual diesel wagons are exactly that; myth. This creature is too great for our world. I hear in my head the spaceship like sounds the Audi R18 TDI's make with their turbo v-6 engines, and how I will never hear that again. I think about the pondering, immortal diesel Mercedes wagons of old. I think about a car that has 230 pounds-feet of torque and instead of powering it with fossil fuel, I fill the tank with free used cooking oil I just fried 20 chickens in (I am a chef!) I think about how just days before the registration ran out on this car I was bombing it around on mountain passes breaking 120 miles an hour. It's almost as if the powers at be were doing everything they can to stop me from having the great joy of driving a car that can maintain 40+ miles per gallon when i'm driving it over 100 miles an hour.
I think about the scandals the Volkswagen group has gone through in the past. I think about Ralph Nader and how he told us all the Beetle was "Unsafe at Any Speed". I think about the Sport Quattro, and how it was too fast and spectators could die. I thought about the big Audi trans-am cars with their all wheel drive and how they were banned because they were too good. I think about the 60 minutes story of how Audi's have "unintended acceleration" and will pin you to your garage door. I think of Ferdinand Piech, how he pushed everyone around him create a better product. I don't wish to be an engineer under him, but those people created some of the internal combustion engine's greatest hits (Veyron, the R8, Phaeton, the quattro system, Le Mans winners for decades, and the 2.0TDI).
...
Charles tells me that the car will pass testing, and that I just need to tell the emissions testing office that it is part of a legal settlement. I ask Charles if they will reimburse me for the registration fees. He tells me they will. I don't believe him.
So now, a month has passed since my first failed appointment. I have not registered the car. I haven't made the time. The car has been unregistered for more than 90 days so I need to go to the DMV and wait in line and fill out paperwork and pay a fee, just go to go a different smog testing station, wait in line, pay the fee and fill out paperwork.
But today, after looking at what my options are for a replacement car, I have fully realized that I will never find a car that is anything like this ever again. Nothing compares. No wagon I can buy with a manual transmission will ever reach 45 MPG. Sure I could buy an electric. It's not the same. An electric car is a computer; the future in it's infancy. A diesel motor is a relic. A relic that has been fully realized by man and evolved as far as man can take it.
I have decided that I want to keep this manual diesel wagon. As a rational person, I have figured out that the amount of time and effort I have put into this car that i'm not even driving has been extraordinary. It's almost as if the car is asking me for another chance.
I'm ready to give it another chance. No car is perfect. This car destroys our environment. That bothers me. But no human is perfect. No matter how hard you try to be the greatest human specimen that a human could possibly be, you will fail at something. Those failures are what makes humans so beautiful. No computer with an electric motor can understand this. Internal combustion motors are living, breathing creatures just like me.
Neil Davidson
April 19, 2017
