For the past year or so, my primary car has been my 164.
For some reason, I snapped and decided that I didn't want
to wait and restore my 142 (a nice body/shot wiring/worn
motor 380,000 mile car) or my 145 (worn body/shot paint/
rebuilt motor/etc).

I found a 2001 VW Golf with the turbodiesel motor for
what seemed to be a reasonable price (though way *way*
more than I've ever spent on *anything* in my whole life).

The good: It is pretty much quiet at 80mph. All the
gauges work. I put 11 gallons of diesel into it and only
spent $19. I drove 70 miles at far in excess of legal
speeds and the gas gauge didn't move (EPA rated at 42/49
or something similar). It isn't quite as fast as the 164
but it can certainly keep up with traffic from a dead
stop and pull pretty hard once on the freeway.

The bad: My 164 doesn't squeek at all. It roars and
makes lots of road noise, but there isn't a rattle or
squeek in the whole interior. This new car is 12 times
younger and makes several squeeks. The silly button
to make the trunk open doesn't work and the ignition
lock is flakey to the point that I'm thinking that I'll
need to replace it in the next couple years before it
completely fails.

The unimportant: I got really lucky finding this thing
since they seem to be pretty rare. This specific car
doesn't have power windows which is a good thing since
the power windows on VWs seem to fail pretty much
constantly. It has a CD player which is an absurd luxury
but the radio reception is worse than my 30 year old
panasonic FM radio.

I'm probably going to sell my 164 and concentrate on
getting the 145 repainted and rolling then get the 142
setup as a testbed for an aftermarket fuel injection
system with the eventual idea that I'll need something to
replace this VW since it won't last forever...

Anyone want to buy a 1970 164? M400 (have spare M410
in garage), twin strombergs, IPD swaybar... ;)
chris