I pulled into a Subway sandwich shop parking lot to escape the smoke pouring out of the air conditioning vents. Coughing, trying to breathe and all the while saying, “No, no, no!” I wondered to myself how my faithful friend and I were going to get out of this one. My faithful steed and good friend was my 1999 VW Passat. We’d been through a lot together and had survived each time. There was the sliding in the rain toward a telephone pole when the tires grabbed at the last second and kept me on the road. There were two rear-end collisions (not on the dance floor) that the offending person’s insurance paid for. There were plenty of drives through the night to allow me to arrive safely home without a hitch. And there were countless other times where the Passat quietly, unquestioningly, and faithfully took me where I needed to go. The Passat and I always came through on the other end. On this day, as I sat on that hot parking lot, I wondered if we would make it. If he’d come through, it would take an 80 yard hail mary pass to the end zone to pull through.

The tow truck came and the guy told me he wouldn’t tow the vehicle while it was still smoldering and smoking. We never saw flames, but smoke poured from the car. A passer-by helped me take the battery cable off in case it was an electrical fire and Laura and I waited for the firemen to show up. Ladder company 25 pulled up and pulled a large hose over to the car. To me, it was as if a doctor came into a patient room with a needle the size of one’s arm. Like a needle that big, I knew that hose represented unpleasant things to come. As the firemen sprayed water into the engine compartment, and then cut out the flooring in the passenger side and sprayed water into the car, on the leather, and near the dash, I realized I’d driven my good old Passat for the final time. Memories flooded back: the test drive over Thanksgiving weekend in ’99 at Tom Wood in Indianapolis; The first speeding ticket with three of my friends with me on Indiana Highway 5; The first 1,000 miles; first dates; last dates (hah!); and on and on.

Volkswagen has fallen on hard times in the reliability sector, especially in the last 10 years or so. I’ve thought about buying another Superbeetle from the late 70’s as I know that if these are taken care of, they’ll last forever, but not so with the current iterations of VW. The final verdict was that one cylinder stopped firing and that unburned fuel went into the exhaust and caught fire there, turning the catalytic converter and exhaust manifold into see-through red hot metal which burned through the heat shield and burned the car from the underside.

It was a good run of 10 years and 107,000 miles. I hate the thought that if this hadn’t happened, there’d still be another 100k left on it. All things happen for a reason and it was obviously time for it to go. We’ll be car shopping, and if you have any recommendations for affordable around-town type cars, let me know. It’s funny how a good car “joins” the family and becomes part of us. The Passat will be missed.

TobyLaura.com