Chimera 40k1/13/2023 And I couldn’t even go the speed limit on the highway, as anything over 60 mph would push the car into the red almost immediately. My fiancée and I would then park for an hour, let it cool down, then do it all over again. I was able to drive only 50 miles at a time before the coolant temperature light illuminated. What resulted from this was a simple three-hour trip turned into an ordeal that took the whole day. In fact, it took about 50 miles for the engine to overheat. Its cooling system couldn’t keep the engine from overheating. I took it for a long test drive and everything seemed to check out, so I parted ways with my money.Ī few moments after I got up to cruising speed on the highway I learned of my new toy’s terrible secret. The father didn’t know much about the car, but said that it ran and drove. However, he was on base, so his father had to do the transaction. The seller of this Phaeton was a fella in the military. It wasn’t exactly my dream Phaeton, but the price was too good to pass on. Mine didn’t have that, instead, it had the 4.2-liter V8 making 335-HP. The most desirable Phaetons in America have the 6.0-liter W12 making 420 HP. I bought this back in July 2021 for the low price of $2,500 with 160,000 miles. I’ll start with the 2004 Volkswagen Phaeton. Yes, the bus can bankrupt me, too, but that thing needs its own post about how silly it is to operate. Instead, let’s focus on the three cars with the most potential to bankrupt me. I won’t torture you with the the whole regimen for the entire fleet. Who is even going to stare at the hinges to notice?Īnd, like all of the cars I’ve talked about thus far, keeping them running is costly. The attention to detail in a Phaeton is so obsessive that even the trunk hinges are works of art. Yet another result of Piëch’s insane thinking, he basically demanded Bentley luxury with the performance to race down the Autobahn while your leather seats massaged you in your perfectly chilled cabin. Just a month later, I spotted another one of my bucket list cars for sale: a Volkswagen Phaeton. But it is a marvel of engineering, with its gear-driven timing and soundtrack that’s like a Lamborghini V10 actively fighting with a paint shaker.Īnd yet, I still wasn’t done. The Touareg V10 TDI is notorious for its absurd repair costs because just about any mechanical repair requires removing the whole drivetrain. The 5.0-liter, 310-HP, and 553 lb-ft torque twin-turbo diesel engine takes up almost every inch of engine bay room offered by the Touareg. It was one of the coolest things that I had ever seen and I became obsessed with how stupid the whole thing is. That SUV, weighed down with a giant slab of ballast weighing 15,498 pounds, tugged the plane down the runway in a fashion resembling an airport tug. Really, it’s because many years ago a much younger me watched as Fifth Gear and Volkswagen hitched a Touareg V10 TDI up to a decommissioned Boeing 747. And yes, that means that I bought two Touaregs within the span of 30 days, possibly because I hate money and reliability. This was another one of Piëch’s galaxy brain ideas. Less than a month after I bought that Touareg, I bought one of my teenage poster cars: the Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI. I’ve put about 12,000 miles on it doing these activities. And most recently, it went far north to the U.S.-Canadian border in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I’ve taken this SUV from coast-to-coast while towing trailers. People, even fellow VW-lovers, told me that’s exactly what would happen. I got the crash-damaged SUV for $1,700 and expected to it to break on me instantly. I found this 2005 Volkswagen Touareg VR6. Following the wise David Tracy, I decided to buy the cheapest of something for the job. There was but one problem: I had nothing to tow them home with. I kicked it off with finds like a $1,500 Audi TT and a $3,000 Buell Lightning XB9SX.Įntering 2021, I launched a quest to buy two kei cars from Japan. I decided to make the best of it by doing the things that I never thought were possible, including filling out a dream fleet. Back in 2020, I–like many Americans–-got furloughed and faced a then uncertain future. In 2021, I decided to continue a trend that I started the year before by picking up more of my dream cars, motorcycles, and buses. And, incredibly, another is one of the most trustworthy cars in my fleet. One of these cars tried to bankrupt me almost immediately. Over a little longer than the past year I sold a broken Volkswagen Passat W8 then replaced it with two Touaregs and a Phaeton. Many have asked how in the heck I keep so many cars running? Well, I think it’s time to give you a look into how things work. I’m now sitting on a hoard of 19 or 20 vehicles, of which at least 25 percent are Smart Fortwos. For the past couple of years I’ve been on a mission to buy my dream fleet of cars, buses, and motorcycles.
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