[T3] On the Road Again!

[jadney at vwtype3.org]

Okay, we are back on the road again, but this time without our Diesel Golf. While the Amarillo 
VW dealer folks were absolutely polite and helpful in every other way, they were playing very 
coy about getting our car fixed. In spite of the fact that I called ahead and TOLD them that my 
radiator was broken, they only checked out availability and didn't bother to order one until 
later the next day, when someone there had time to take a look at it themselves. At that point, 
a radiator was 2 days out and it was so late that they couldn't promise to be finished by the 
end of the week.

My requests for a loaner car for local use, just so we wouldn't be stuck in our motel room, 
were turned down, very politely, with various stories of how few (numbers varied) they had 
and how many people were requesting them. Nevertheless, they were always able to 
respond to our requests for a shuttle trip promptly, which we appreciated.  

So, after considering our options, I started calling auto rental places, and got one at Budget. 
With the help of the dealership shuttle, we offloaded all our stuff from our disabled Golf and 
drove it to Budget. We now have a Honda Pilot, a truly unremarkable vehicle that seems fine 
in many respects, other than being much bigger than any rational person would choose to 
drive, but also continues to disappoint in many small, and unexpected, ways.

The cruise control seems to be poorly programmed; it is clunky and slow to respond. The 
owners manual is not as helpful as it should be. It has a beautiful, color center console 
display, but that display is angled to face someone who happens to be ~6' 5" tall, which 
seems especially odd coming from the Japanese. I've been trying to educate myself on some 
of this car's advanced driver assist features, but so far my impression is that VERY, few 
people will ever bother to figure out how to enable and safely use most of them.    

I'm afraid to keep track of gas mileage. It's got to be so poor, especially compared to our 
Diesel, that I may be better off staying ignorant.

So far, I'm really missing our complex, but well thought out, Golf Sportwagon, and this is only 
my first short day of driving the Pilot. But at least we are back on our way, and will plan to 
return to Amarillo in about 12 days to pick up our repaired Golf TDI (Diesel.) None of this 
would have happened if we had been driving one of my Type 3s.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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