I have an unhealthy interest in all vehicles Germanic and already own a Mk4 Golf SDI whilst the missus drives a 1.7 Lupo SDI. For those who don't know the SDI models were Volkswagen's now long discontinued range of normally aspirated diesels, I've got a bit of a thing for them...
Whilst the SDI's are deeply reliable, amazingly cheap to run, and above all else utterly indestructible, they are also incredibly slow and dull. I'd always had a hankering to try the legendary TDI units, they are after all the same engines found in the SDI variants I love, only with a trubo to spice things up... I did worry for a while about the costs of turbo and DMF replacements (Both absent on the NA derv models we currently own) but in the end decided that life's too short and went for it!
intially set my sights on another Golf, I quickly realised Passats seemed to cost slightly less to buy and insure and don't seem to have fallen victim to the bad mods/negative image when compared to PD 130/150 Golfs, also, having a young family the extra space seemed to make sense. Fast forward to last weekend and I became the proud(ish) owner of a fairly clean '04 Passat Highline saloon in full fat 130 PD flavour on 136k with a part service history.
The Passat makes up the third/spare car, the intention being to use it as a big/comfortable family weekend barge, the rattly NA Lupo and Golf dervs will continue to be used for the weekly grind. It has a bit of a to-do list, not least of which is a coolant leak I've just discovered, but I do enjoy tinkering and don't technically need the car to be ready anytime soon so I can steadily knock the rough edges off at a leisurely pace, it should provide me with some fun along the way
