I love my Passat. No one will ever convince me otherwise. In my mind, the Germans still make some of the finest engines in the world. Call it a wartime hobby. Call it competitive advantage. I just really love my car.
But today’s modern automobiles are more than just the moving parts. They’re more than just a great drivetrain. They’re more than just the raw, torquey power that makes that Autobahn so damn fun. Today’s cars are mobile computers. And, to my complete and utter disappointment, the Germans still can’t build a decent P.C.
Imagine sitting behind the wheel of normally aspirated, 2.8L German powerhouse, with all five gears just begging for abuse. Imagine a redline that screams with excitement as the needle approaches. Imagine heated leather seats and a sound system that makes Carnegie Hall seem like an old garden shed.
Then imagine a multicoloured, trance-inducing dashboard that chirps incessantly whenever the car begins to move.
beep! beep! beep!
Three audible tones, every time the tach moves beyond 2000 rpm.
beep! beep! beep!
Lights flashing all over like a Teutonic christmas tree.
beep! beep! beep!
Stop and go traffic becomes an absolute nightmare, a marvel of pavlovian logic. Sitting in the car is now the aural equivalent of fingernails on a really dusty blackboard.
beep! beep! beep!
The best part is, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the car. It’s a computer malfunction. A faulty outsourced “module” from premium German parts-maker Bosch. An egregious design flaw that Volkswagen has yet to address, or at this point, even acknowledge.
beep! beep! beep!
And when you finally take the vehicle in for service, the first thing the dealership tells you is that it costs at least $2500 to fix. And that you might have an oil leak. And that they’re charging you $100 just for taking a peek underneath the hood.
beep! beep! beep!
Now the $100 I can almost understand. After all, someone did have to move my car from visitor parking all the way into the garage. And while a c-note for valet service might seem like a little much, even for a VW dealership, my real problem comes with their so-called “diagnostics”.
beep! beep! beep!
“So what’s the damage?”
“You’re gonna need a new A.B.S. Control Module.”
“A what?”
“Basically, it’s your A.B.S.”
“So its a computer malfunction?”
“Looks like it.”
“And you can’t just replace the chip?”
“Nope. The whole thing has to come out.”
“What about the oil?”
“Yeah, it looks like you might have an oil leak”.
“Might?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But…”
“And that’ll be another $500. So…should we start the work today, or…”
beep! beep! beep!
It was time for some serious homework. First and foremost, I wanted to make sure the car was safe to drive without a so-called “A.B.S. Control Module”. Then I wanted to stop the damn thing from beeping every time the car moved.
My amature diagnosis was based on the following logic: occasionally, in the coldest depths of winter, the broken module spontaneously started working again, all by itself. That gave me my first clue that the problem wasn’t mechanical at all. My car had a virus. A computer virus. I couldn’t believe it. Sounds like a design flaw to me.
beep! beep! beep!
It turns out that the “premium” Bosch part was force-feeding an error into the dashboard, causing it to beep and glow incessantly, and in the process, raise my blood-pressure to extremely unhealthy levels every time I sat in the cockpit.
The do-it-yourself answer: unplug the broken module, stop the error from reaching the dash, and save the two and a half grand.
Silence. Glorious, inexpensive silence.
I really do love my Passat. No one will ever convince me otherwise. Beep free and ballsy, it rips down the highway like a wiley adolescent, fully aware of its awesome physical power, and not too “grown-up” to conserve it.
But I will never buy a Volkswagen again.