Car 26 was a car which as mentioned on the previous page needed to save me some cash as I was'nt prepared to line the treasury's pockets with silver in the way the BMW was doing, so I bought my first Diesel not any old oil burner though. A friend of mine had been shouting the praises of these cars for some time so I did my homework and bought myself a later version of the same car, that being a Volkswagen Passat 1.9 SE Tdi Estate, the car had some 114,000 miles on it when I bought it early in 2005 and already i've added over 30,000 to that total. More importantly though it is one tank or £50 more economical to run every month, returning over 55 to the gallon and only needing refilling every 600 miles. It also has some almost palacial comforts compared to my earlier cars these being things such as Climate control, fuel computer, multiple airbags, multi speaker hifi (an OEM one that is actually worth listening to !), adjustable everything (seats, steering, etc, etc) 12v sockets in the boot and more! So much stuff in fact that all I can think to add is a towbar at some stage.
Servicing comes from a local VW specialist meaning I don't have to suffer the main dealers prices at all if I don't want to ! Even so this did'nt stop the car costing me £500 in the first six months I owned it, with such delights as the radiator failing (common Passat B5 problem), driveshaft boots giving up from just pure mileage, alarm sensors packing up and one of the rear doors refusing to open with a jammed mechanism. Even after all this it is still cheaper than the beemer to run so i'm more than happy.
Unfortunately due to the extreme size of this car it did'nt fit in my garage, the BMW ony just did but the Passat required the removal of the bench, but did at least assist with the dumping of it all at the local tip once again proving it's usefulness. In conjunction with my mountain biking hobby the car has again proved its worth as it swallows everything with space to spare and the bike fits on it's carrier on the roof with the aid of some VW roof bars which fit onto the standard roof rails. And after all this it still gets you to the destination ultra economically even though you've destroyed the aerodynamics by putting a windbrake on the roof !