Well, it takes space for two adults and two pretty-big kids, with luggage and whatever else you’ll need. To go across over about four days. I’ve done it in my non-wagon TDI Golf when boys were smaller, and I can tell you, it was a tad cramped, but it was a lot cheaper than buying a minivan.

Ah, but a Z28 does not necessarily qualify as a “less-joyful” car, heavier though it might be. Speed is strongly associated with general automotive joy.

Even as I castigate driving a car less-fun than you need, I find myself now at the end of the VW buy-back period thinking that what I really need is something big enough to do our annual month-and-half NC-to-Utah-and-back trip, with two adults and two adult-sized children. It’s hard for my mind not to look down the…

[Just mail your clothes the day before, with a pre-paid-postage box to mail the dirty laundry home. It sounds nuts, but would you pay thousands of dollars more to drive some bigger, less-joyful car just to avoid doing that a few times?]

The cost of replacing seats and paint that are medium scuffed versus thrashed by a wolverine and scratched open with a screwdriver are basically the same. This car clears the hurtle of “good condition” to “you really don’t have to fix anything”. The qualitative difference between the two is mild, but the cost savings…

I read this column every day. Because the writing is wonderful. But I always know how I’m going to vote literally the second I see the picture and the price. I don’t know if that is because the writing is perfectly crafted to be informative without being partisan to one vote or the other, or because I’m a chimp…

Yeah. Because, if you think about it, by spreading the work out across 12 cylinders, you’re really lessening the load on each one, thereby making it last much longer than a V8.

Man. How did I not think of that before? The clear reason a V12 is more reliable, right there in front of my nose, and I never put it together.…

I now truly understand Fiddler On The Roof. There as Chavaleh has told Tevye that she’s going to marry a gentile, he contemplates casting his own daughter off forever. As as his mind goes about trying to figure out what to do, he realizes what he must do and says, as I must say now for the Brat that I ardently love,…

I had a black 2013 TDI convertible beetle, and I drove it through the winter. It got plenty cold, but I never found the generously-insulated soft top lacking. In fact, that car got insanely hot, if you let it. That thing sealed strong, too, and never leaked.

I think a soft top by another manufacturer that wasn’t…

“That’s why, when I saw this silver over black Quattrovalvole sitting at the curb with a for sale sign in the window, my baser instincts took over, unconsciously pulling my car to a stop so I could leap out and take a closer look.”

Could there be a better indicator of why Rob is a real Jalop. And why I feel so at home…

Ballsy is generous.

The memory of that bus will live on with us for many years to come.

I question how much soul this admittedly awesome van could sustain. It’s interesting and rare, but I can’t imagine it being actually, dynamically fun to drive.

Unless fear of rolling over is fun. Which in my full-sized conversion van, I’ll admit it is, sometimes.

I just think this might be a case where if there were…

This! I am glad this van exists and I want someone else to own it so I can see and enjoy it.

Would I spend every dollar I have to own it personally? Not even close.

Oh, they’ve been registered a long time, just haven’t set the sell-back date. Which will be the very last possible day, because they don’t really depreciate with time under the buy-back policy.

Any chance of forced buy-backs as with VW? Because that worked out awesome. I just turned 100k on my 2012 Golf TDI this morning and I’m still going to get about 20K when I sell it back. And another about-20k when I sell back my wife’s Passat. And that after I sold back three others.

Fingers crossed...

Well, a rust-free, running CONVERTIBLE V8 anything is worth $3,000.

“If I had a whole family, that is”.

[*tear]

Can you identify for us and give us a link to a “top of the line” scraper? I have like a thousand crappy scrapers that scrape unevenly or not at all and are basically one tiny step up from my own fingernails.

Is there one that is acutally good?

I and those in my situation are waiting with a [small] pile of money.

I must echo my wisened elder commenters here: crack pipe, but still much wanty. Price is the great regulator that keeps all of us from filling our garages and yards with red Italian beauty; it’s a cruel mistress to deprive us, yet we must concede.