jeremyweber.com

October 6th, 2007 @ 11.18 pm

For a while now Beverly’s wanted a new car… her ‘95 Beretta isn’t the most stylish of cars on the road, and it’s been wearing out. It stalls on startup occasionally, the defrost-fan-etc. knob just gained lots of character, the front end needs some re-aligning, and on Thursday the water pump sprung a leak and left plenty of antifreeze in Annapolis. So, the past few weeks we’ve been looking for a new (to us) vehicle for Beverly… one that’s not boring. That meant not a Honda or Toyota, and not tan/ silver/ grey/ black/ or white in color. And Beverly wanted at least a sunroof, which is a compromise of being part way to a convertible.

Thursday night (coincidentally) we test drove a Jetta GLI that was priced fairly well, and Beverly really liked it. She found the 6-speed manual transmission much easier than my Ranger’s 5-speed, and the 200HP/ 195ft-lb of torque a lot of fun. So we thought about it. Today we took the plunge, and bought that Jetta GLI. It’s a blast to drive! And it looks really good, especially with those 17″ rims, sunroof, and bright red paint.
After buying the car, we went down to the Annapolis to see her parents and her broken down car, still where it died at the doctor’s office. That’s when the picture was taken. We tried to diagnose the cause of the massive antifreeze leak and see if it was repairable. Since it was no longer dripping, we added a gallon of antifreeze and noticed a fast drip from underneath, but didn’t find anything further. Then we started the car and parked it out of the way (but still in the doctors parking lot), and then looked again - this time we saw dripping all the way at the top of the engine at the water pump. I’ll fairly confidently say that’s the problem. Even though it’s not that expensive of a part or hard to fix, the tow truck ride and the cost to repair the other breaking parts would be more than the car is worth, so we’re pronouncing it dead and calling the coroner (or donation company’s tow truck).