New Car
In April I got my tax refund back and found that I had enough money to buy a new car. I had been planning to do this for a while, since my current car was getting a little old (OK, maybe more than a little). If you aren't familiar with it, my old car was a 1984 Buick Century:
It was a good car, but it had recently started to show its age. The brakes were getting sticky, the engine would often putter out when going in reverse, and I was a bit worried about the safety (no airbags, untested seat belts, very old body designed before strict side-impact test requirements, etc..). Ultimately I was worried that if I had any problems with it, I might have to pay far more than the car was actually worth in order to repair it. So it was time to get a new car.
If I had infinite money, I might have liked to get a new BMW M6, but that was a little bit out of my price range. I narrowed my search down to these criteria:
- Fast
- Small
- Good gas mileage (for a non-hybrid)
- Not too expensive
Ultimately I decided on the new 2006 Volkswagen GTI. The GTI is basically a high-performance version of the VW Golf (like the GLI is a high-perf Jetta). The newest model has a new 2.0L turbocharged engine, and the "Direct-Shift Gearbox" (DSG), which is a dual-clutch automatic transmission that can be used in manual mode with the shifters on the steering wheel.
You might recognize the new GTI from the "fast" commericals on TV, in which an evil little rabbit coaxes drivers to drive with the windows down, kick their girlfriends out of the car, and disobey police officers (the symbolism of the little rabbit is that the GTI is the 'evil' version of the VW Rabbit (aka Golf)). Here are Google Video links so you can view them in all their glory:
There are also some other ads with Peter Stormare (of Fargo & Seinfeld fame) as a German engineer ("in da house") who smashes up riced-out economy cars and replaces them with GTIs. I didn't like those ads as much.
So far the GTI has been pretty awesome. Here's a picture (with a reflection of me thrown in for free):
And some more:
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October 18th, 2006 - 11:40
Hey,
Totally in to your bit on hooking up to the car via CAN. Can you tell me where you got your USB-CAN cable from? The dealer is trying to rip me off to do anything such as enable DRL’s etc, and I am stoked to know I can do this all myself.
I have the 2006 GLI same color, wheels, etc. Have the nav package though.
Thanks,
Nolan
October 18th, 2006 - 11:54
I got a HEX-USB+CAN cable from http://www.ross-tech.com/. It’s sort of expensive, but worth it in the long run if you can avoid getting ripped off by the dealer a couple of times
August 4th, 2007 - 23:33
Hey there
I have recently purchased an 07 Jetta TDI and Im quite concerned on this VW ipod adapter. Is it true that you when you select your songs it takes a few seconds to change and it only plays your songs via from the playlists in a particular order? Also could you only select a song with its track number? I would honestly say if thats all true then I’m very disappointed and would you think that with the dealership that their installing it for free would not be worth it? And it would be better off buying a different adapter that is connected somewhere accessible and able to interface with the ipod instead of the cd controls?
Your help will cancel this installation.
Thankyou. Much appreciated. Matt
email: msp5a3@hotmail.com
August 5th, 2007 - 00:03
Hi,
Yes, it is all true that it takes several seconds to switch songs, you can only play 5 songs from 5 playlists, you can only see the track number, not the name, etc.. It is indeed all very disappointing.
It was good enough for what I use it for, but if you want more it might not be worth it even if the dealer installs it for free. It’s up to you of course, but you’re probably better off getting an aftermarket iPod adapter at CarToys or something like that (I haven’t really looked into those but I assume there are some better ones).