This is the ‘face’ behind the blog: our 1993 VW Eurovan MV Weekender, complete with a pull out bed and pop top roof.
VW Eurovan of Doom: note the piece of bumper on the ground
I’m thinking of calling it Christine, although to be fair it’s more capricious rather than actively evil. It likes our money and thinks we should walk more, perhaps taking a more spiritual approach to life, that we could really do without.
It’s also been unlucky with people crashing into it.
We moved from the UK to California in April for family reasons, and bought the Eurovan in our first two weeks here. We found it on Craigslist, joined AAA and asked a mechanic to check it out before we bought it, so we knew there were a few things wrong, but didn’t think there was anything urgent.
It cost us most of our remaining money, but it worked out well for apartment hunting (unlike in my mother in law’s car, the kids couldn’t open the doors while we were driving!). It was also a very handy moving van, then became our everyday vehicle, and we were looking forward to taking our kids camping in state parks.
But it was not to be (not yet anyway). Within a couple of months, it wouldn’t start. Thankfully, along with our campervan insurance cover we had bought a triple AAA breakdown assistance policy that included a lot of towing (though we’ve just heard we’ve used it all up), and the van was towed to the mechanics. We got it back, and bought our kids some sleeping bags from Target, then it had to go to the mechanics again, and then the air conditioning broke.
It was too hot in the back without the air conditioning, so we didn’t go camping in the summer either. Eventually it spent 2 weeks and $3000 at the mechanics and came back with a list of repairs done, and we parked it as usual in the parking lot behind our apartment.
A couple of days later, we went out in the morning to find someone had crashed into the back of it, without leaving any details. We’d spent all our money on the repairs and the damage was less then our insurance deductible, so we bought some coloured tape to fix the tail light temporarily and reattached the bumper.
The next week, we went shopping, and the same thing happened again: someone crashed into it in the supermarket car park and left. So we put the bumper back in the van and taped over the other tail light. Wish we had a lower deductible on our insurance policy now, but we didn’t expect people to behave like that.
Towards the end of summer, as the weather got cooler, the van started to have trouble changing gear in the mornings. The mechanics had another look, and it worked better for a while. Then one morning when I was taking my older son to school I couldn’t change into first gear from reverse, and was stuck in the middle of the car park, so my husband started driving the school run. A couple of days later, the van only made it part of the way to school, and ended up at the mechanics again.
For the three days it spent at the mechanics, the van behaved perfectly. They couldn’t find anything wrong with it, and when it came back it was fine again, having had nothing done to it. The only thing they said was odd was that when it arrived the clutch pedal was down, so they pulled it up.
It reminded me of that Bananas in Pyjamas episode ‘Super Bananas’, where the Bananas in Pyjamas think they can fix things just by looking at them.
Several weeks later, we were in flu season. The boys and I had flu, and when one of them recovered, my husband raced off to take him to school and get back in time for an 8am phone meeting. At 7.50 I got a call from him. Could I please email his meeting group and tell them he couldn’t do his presentation? The van had just stopped on the way back from school, and had to be towed to the mechanics again, leaving us with flu, no car and the water switched off in our building (to be fair that wasn’t the van’s fault, but why stop a good grumble with an insignificant detail like the facts!)
7 months after buying the van, we have spent as much on repairs and rental cars as it cost us to buy it. I truly hope the next post about this van will be a more positive one!
