The Jetta has retired

About a month ago (can you tell I'm catching up on my posts?) I decided it was time for a new car. My Volkswagen Jetta's track never was never great and after nine years, I was ready to part with it before I needed to pump even more money into it for repairs. Enumerating all of its issues could be the subject for several posts and I'd rather not think about them anymore. My family has had a lot of Toyotas and they have all been very reliable. The Toyota Camry was at the top of my list for the Jetta's replacement and that's what I ended up getting.

I purchased the Camry from a dealership in South Austin which is close to my office. They gave me a insultingly low trade-in offer for the Jetta so I decided that I would sell it myself through craigslist. On the day that my new car was ready, I had driven into work and left my Jetta in the office building's parking garage overnight as I got a ride from a friend to the dealership. The next day as I was walking through the garage, I looked over at my old car from a distance and noticed the window looked like it was down. I almost kept walking in to work but it was just too odd that I would have forgotten to roll up the windows and I started walking over to the car. After getting a little closer I saw broken glass on the ground. Someone had broken the passenger side window and stolen the radio! I was glad that I had already taken everything out of the car to sell it but pissed off that this had happened. All I could think of was how difficult it would be to sell in its current condition. It turns out it didn't really matter that much. I put an ad on craigslist late at night and by the next day I had about 30 inquiries or offers for the car. So by that weekend I had sold the Jetta without needing to fix the window or replace the window. What a relief.

So far the Camry has been wonderful. There is one issue where the leather on the door panel is bubbling out as if they didn't apply enough glue to the backside but I plan on getting that fixed soon. Other than that, I'm really happy with the purchase but I do sometimes miss the standard transmission of the Jetta.