[V8] getting rid of the V8?

[Roger M. Woodbury]

Hi Brad:  Well you have a lot of miles on the car and it undoubtedly is time for a serious discussion about keeping it and continuing to let it “nickel and dime” you to death, or buy something new.  

We have just been through that discussion with my wife’s 100CS Avant that has 175,000 miles total since 1994.  135,000 or those miles are Maine miles including a LOT of winter driving which is really hard.  
The estimate for all the routine maintenance work the car needs for a state inspection sticker is past two grand, and with a timing belt service due next summer, that equals three grand in total over the next year.  

I put more than three grand into my V8 Quattro (1990, 80,000 miles) last summer.

Here is what we decided to do. You situation is different and so are your needs but for what it is worth, here is our thinking in this house.

1.  The station wagon is our utility vehicle.  It does everything we want a car to do in terms of utility use and anything it won’t do is why there are truck rental companies.
2. After putting the wagon up on the mechanic’s lift and looking at the body very carefully we found ZERO rust.  That despite the State of Maine’s insistence on using salt brine to fight ice and snow on the roads in winter.
3. We have numerous issues with the car. The central locking system does not work; the cruise control does not work; the rear hatch is difficult for my wife to unlatch and has been “sticky” since we got the car in 2001.  (the linkage in the hatch is not as precise as is the rest of the car); the car really does need exterior refinishing at this point, including the rear hatch which has corrosion on the surface beneath the rear window; the rear winder wiper works but the washer does not....the fluid cannot pass through the wiper mechanism which is a common problem and is very expensive to fix, if you have to replace the wiper mechanism itself.  Then there is a laundry list of suspension things that need to be done due to mileage...control arms and the dozen little rubber gromets that the Germans love to use and that get old over time.  The annoying exhaust leak is a clamp between the muffler and resonator. Otherwise the exhaust system is NOT rusty.  The car will require rear brakes completely:  80,000 miles since they were done last:  normal.

At the end of the rather exhaustive examination we have decided to keep the car and fork out the dough.  It will be a while before we will have the car repainted, but that will be done as well.  The car does what it is supposed to do, and there is little to no sign that the car will ever stop so long as the routine maintenance stuff is attended to.  The car gets a very steady 20-22 miles per gallon.  It is likely we will put a total of five or six grand into the car over the next two and one half years at which time we will have a car that will look like new from twenty feet and run like new also.  The enemy we know is better than the enemy we don’t know.

As far as your V8 is concerned, if the only thing it needs right now is a radiator, even for $700 bucks you are ahead of the game.  That 2000 A6 you mentioned will likely cost that in sales tax and excise taxes and added insurance premiums alone.  And you will find the A6 won’t have the love factor at the love/hate confluence that the V8 has.

Now, the Microsoft Windows test for changing your V8 into anything else:  Microsoft windows says, “are you sure you want to get rid of the V8? Are  you VERY sure you want to get rid of the V8”  and even after  you are ready to write a check for something else, Windows rears its ugly head and asks again, “Are you SURE.....?”  

I have been in and out of V8’s twice now. And each and everytime, I have ignored the Windows test.  Then I bought the car I have now, and I am sure:  I’m keeping mine until the wheels fall off.

Roger