quattro Digest, Vol 3, Issue 4: new recall

[Tom Nas]

At 04:52 3-1-04, Larry C. Leung wrote:
>Wow! Never thought that European traffic was getting that heavy  (duh!).

It's a heritage issue (old cities planned for horse and cart traffic now 
stuffed to the gills with cars and trucks) compounded by governments unable 
to grasp that people who live in a place need to drive to work every now 
and then. I work in a town that's mostly business park and industrial area 
which has been built in the 1970s. There are only two roads leading in and 
out, one lane each way and both leading to a congested highway. Every night 
when I go home, it takes me 15-20 minutes to get out of the parking lot, 
because the traffic jam starts there. The 18 km trip usually takes me at 
least an hour, but almost two hours isn't unheard of. Around there parts, 
cruise control is useless.
By bus (no train station where I live or where I work) would take two hours 
every time and would on a single trip base be as expensive as by car (we're 
getting close to paying $1.50/litre for 98 unleaded).

>  Mostly 'cuz I don't trust the parking lot at school (ya never know what
>students in gangland will do to a teacher's car) I've been driving the
>Subie beater to work. It's an autobox and it's sluggish at highway speeds
>(although for some reason, off the line, it's really not bad), and even
>manually selected gears are slow to change, but I feel that I'm not loosing
>too much in driving the Sube, as, even though it gets the same fuel, eh, uh,
>economy rates as the 200Q (IOW, sucky) it at least runs on 87 octane.

My fuel economy ('90 80 2.0E 112 hp) varies quite a bit depending on the 
type of driving I do, lots of easy highway driving boosts the usual 10 
l/100 km by almost 50%. I could save some fuel money by getting a TDI but 
that didn't come until '93 and the TDI cars are popular (= expensive). On 
the other hand my road tax rates would go up by 100% for a diesel and 
insurance would be more expensive, too.
Running on LPG is being discouraged by reducing the number of filling 
stations as well as reducing fuel price benefits.
What I probably should do is buy an old Golf diesel as a daily driver, but 
I can't seem to get used to the lack of comfort and the noise and rattles.

And I wouldn't park a really nice, new car where I work either. Too much 
broken glass lying around to testify that it's not a good idea.

Regards, Tom