Why you shouldn't let me drive your car

That's right. This VW insignia on the back of my car is dirty, just like the company / Photo by Deborah Lynch

Just as I am a jinx for sports teams and competitors, I also seem to have that opposite Midas touch with cars. For years, I drove and loved my many Saabs, so much so that I found a 1988 treasure on Craigslist that I helped my son buy for his college car five years ago. Today, Ruby sits blanketed in wood dust in a much needed space in my two-car garage for the past year after she failed to pass inspection. The problem is, Saab parts are hard to come by since General Motors killed the car nearly three years ago by refusing to sell Saab to a Chinese company because it would compromise GM-patented engineering. Limited junkyard parts failed to keep my 2006 Saab 9-3 road ready, too, and after I gave that one to my son, it developed even more problems, and he traded it for a Mazda. When I gave that 9-3 to my son, I decided to go green – or so I thought.

Ruby the 1988 Saab 900 taking up space / Photo by Deborah Lynch

I fell for clever Volkswagen marketing and statistics for its TDI models (diesel) even though my husband raised his eyebrows saying he didn’t see how it was possible that a diesel engine could get both 50 mpg and burn cleanly. I had done my research though and showed him all of the data that proved that the VW diesels were among the cleanest. Even if my husband's skepticism was only slightly on target, I convinced myself that I was still getting such great mileage that using less fuel alone had to be greener.For nearly a year, I proudly drove that spiffy white VW Golf everywhere from Mississippi to Vermont, using my Diesel Finder App to fill the tank at a cost never higher than $29 that eventually dropped to less than $20. It was crazy. I drove and drove and drove, and hardly ever had to put fuel into it. Sometimes when cruising on the highway, I got nearly 60 mpg. I couldn’t figure out why everyone wasn’t driving one.

I still love my VW Eurovan / Photo by Deborah Lynch

Then, one pleasant morning last September, my jinx struck again. I couldn’t believe what I read and heard on the news. VW was being accused of cheating on emissions tests, of having installed a device that would shut down emissions during testing only, but then spew more than tractor trailers when on the road. My husband’s engineering logic was right. If he had figured it out, why hadn’t any U.S. emissions control or EPA officials considered the possibility sooner? It took researchers at West Virginia University to smell the rat and snap its neck in the trap.VW officials quickly denied knowing anything about this engineering trickery. They claimed they would make it right and take care of their customers. It turned out that more than 500,000 vehicles were affected in the United States.After the scandal hit the papers, I felt guilty every time I drove my car. What I had once driven proudly, almost haughtily, I now skulked in. I didn’t want anyone to condemn me for driving something so polluting. My husband would cough cough cough every time he walked behind my car. I felt deceived, cheated, embarrassed. I had bought that car because I deeply care about the environment. I bike and walk to as many things as I can to avoid driving when possible. In fact, I wear the scars of that conviction on my face after a bicycle crash on a 15-mile ride home from work six years ago."By duping regulators, Volkswagen turned nearly half a million American drivers into unwitting accomplices in an unprecedented assault on our environment," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates said of the active criminal investigation. That was me. Duped. An accomplice.I was mad. I wrote letters to NPR, to my local VW dealer. All 500,000 U.S. accomplices waited less than patiently for a settlement or decision by VW as to what they would do. I felt that since the car I had bought was not the car I thought I had bought, that they should buy my car back at full price. A few months later, VW decided to reward U.S. owners with a $500 Visa card and $500 to spend at a VW dealer.

Goodbye, TDI. Hello, GTI!

I had driven that polluting Golf TDI with guilt for three months. Much like George Farquar, a plaintiff in the consumers’ suit against VW who said he had reluctantly continued to drive his Jetta even though he got “nasty looks from every Prius car that pass[ed],” I felt like a criminal on the streets in my VW. I couldn’t take the righteousness of other drivers or the thoughts of driving it any longer. I took VW’s “gift” and went into my local VW dealer. I traded that diesel guzzler for a sportier gas-engine Golf GTI that averages 34 mph on its manual transmission. The dealer had other incentives on and gave me a pretty fair trade-in value on the Scarlet letter laden TDI. I slammed the door on naivety as quickly as possible.With last week’s news that VW had agreed to pay up to $14.7 billion to settle U.S. claims on the TDIs, including offers to buy back the cars at prescandal value and pay additional cash compensation to owners or to fix the cars (with lower mileage resulting, for sure), I acknowledge that my inability to stomach driving such a polluter cost me lots of money. It was cash well spent. It gave me peace of mind.If you love your car, don’t ever let me buy that brand. Just as I killed Saab, I may now be killing VW.

Works Consulted

Ewing, Jack and Hiroko Tabuchi. “VW’s U.S. Diesel Settlement Clears Just One Financial Hurdle.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company. 28 June 2016. Web. 2 July 2016.Reuters. “VW Agrees to Buy Back Diesel Vehicles, Fund Clean Air Efforts. The New York Times.The New York Times Company. 28 June 2016. Web. 2 July 2016.