We recently traded my Passat (2 weeks ago tonight) for a Honda Civic and I must say I'm very pleased with our decision.  33 miles to the gallon for the 1st tank of gas and being able to use regular instead of mid grade or premium is wonderful especially with prices headed toward $3.00 a gallon.  The best I could get was 20 miles to the gallon in the Passat.  The only problem we ever had with it was the climate control air conditioner which fortunately was covered by the extended warranty (they had to replace all 4 motors) but we only had 2000 more miles left on the warranty and I was concerned about other problems that could go wrong with all the electrical stuff on the car.  David helped confirm our decision when he told us of the horrible replacement cost of the 4-motion transmission.  Yeah the Passat was much more plush I guess but the Civic is fun to drive.  

I read somewhere that VW is reintroducing the the deisel again in the spring of '08, with 60+ MPG the new bio-deisel is supposed to be cleaner in emmisions the the gas burner. :shock:

the way I see it, if you get twice the mileage with a deisel and it's not twice the price of gas, your still making out. But I wouldn't just go buy one just because it came out. You must just be in the market for a new car and have that as one of the options. Right now diesel is cheaper than gas here as gas is $3.05 a gallon  right now and deisel is $2.95.
David, I like the way you think........You WILL outlast that Volvo, even if it lasted another 25 years! :wink:
Note: Just because your everyday driver is not a VW doesn't mean you don't love VW's!

I'll just keep driving Homer the Superbus . . . yeah, it only gets about 20 MPG on the road at its very best, but . . . I made one payment of $400 on it over 5 year ago and haven't had a car payment since.  Yeah, I've had to replace the engine 4 times (a bus + the way I push it is just a wee bit rough on a stock 1600) and the tranny once . . . I've had to replace a few front end and brake parts along . . . but all of those repair cost add up to less $1500 'cause I've been able to do most of the work myself.  I pay more for fuel than most folks with "modern" cars . . . but I don't have a car payment, my GA "ad velorum" tax (I know I probably spelled that wrong, but I can't spell English very good and that is Latin) is only a couple of bucks a year thanks to the state placing a value of $100 on it.  If the air conditioner breaks, big deal!  Window regulators are fairly easy to install and not too expensive, and I don't have worry about the hole in the ozone layer getting bigger if I fix it myself without any special equipment.  If the heat quits working, who cares? . . . it never worked to start with!   :lol:

For most of us, owning a vehicle is a necessity.  Everybody has to drive something.  What I choose to drive and why I choose to drive it makes perfect sense to me.  What a lot of other folks choose to drive sounds crazy to me.  Soooooo . . . Do I think everyone should drive an old, rusty, half junk, Krylon painted bus?  NO WAY . . . wouldn't the world be a boring place if EVERYONE drove a Bus? . . . or a Ford or a Honda or a Volvo for that matter?  :wink: