The Jetta Sportwagen TDI was the first car we purchased. It was a magnificent machine. Gorgeous and incredibly well engineered, but in one particular way a little too engineered. We were hopeful that Volkswagen would come out with a fix for the car, but their deadline for finding a fix for our model came and went and we decided it was time to part with our smogmobile. (They did come out for a fix for some of the newest models, but ours was not one of the newest models.) We started the search for our next car and bought a new to us Subaru Outback at the beginning of February. (The Subaru didn’t get the post it deserved, but life was a little crazy at that time.) It was a bit of a blessing to have two cars during the month of February (when we had a lot of family in town and then were making a lot of trips across town to  the hospice center), but after things settled down in March we began the paperwork to sell our wagen back to VW. Thanks to goodwill packages and class action lawsuits, our return on investment wasn’t bad. Last week, our sell back appointment rolled around and we drove the VW for the last time. Parting was sad. It felt like we were abandoning a bad child as we left it in the VW lot stripped of its plates. I’ve puzzled over why we get so attached to things and as I’ve gone through pictures to write this post, I realized maybe it isn’t so much the car (although it was a very nice car), but the memories we made with it. The VW came into our lives just days before an unplanned, yet very important road trip. It took us on countless adventures across multiple different states and was there for the everyday happenings of the past three years. It was a constant in the midst of so much change.

We will miss the VW’s incredible gas mileage, panoramic sun roof, full-sized spare, powerful acceleration, gorgeous leather seats, and the fuel economy (yes, I said that twice), but maybe not how it polluted at 40 times the EPA NOx (Nitrogen Oxide, AKA smog) limit.