Spring 2003, After driving the beetle for about 8 months the "fun" had pretty much worn out, it was noisy, drafty, handled poorly, uncompleted and didn't get very good gas mileage. I didn't want to put any more money into it, knowing what work the body would need for me to consider it to be nice, but I needed to be able to find a replacement car for what I could sell the beetle for.
I started to keep an eye out for a replacement for the Beetle, watching for Rabbits and Rabbit Convertibles, I shot a couple adds out on the interent looking for a possible trade. After about a month of looking around I didn't see too many vehicles I could buy with what I could sell the beetle for (I figured around 1500) that I would be able to jump in and drive 65 miles a day, 7 days a week which was what I needed to do.
One day at work I remembered one of the other technicians had bought a really clean 89 Jetta from a friend of his last summer to drive instead of his Suburban gas-pig. I haden't seen him driving it around for a while and asked him what he was doing with it one day. He wasn't driving it because he had yet to find a way to adjust the seat so it wouldn't make his lower back ache. "Why, do you want to buy it?" he asked. Long story short, he said it had around 150k+ miles on it and he would sell to me for what he had into it, which was quite reasonable.
The next day, which was saturday, my Beetle was out by the interstate at a gas station with a for sale sign on it. $2400obo. I got one call within the fist four hours, guy looked at it, offered me 1500, and I decided to hold out at least a while. The next day, no calls. Following week, back on the commute, parked in the parking lot with signs on it, no calls. I was already looking around for some alloy wheels and other bits to fix up the Jetta. That next saturday, it was back out there by the interstate, no calls. Sunday I got a call from someone who was interested in it, we met up, he drove it, offered me 1500 for it, and I said I would call him back in about an hour. I went home, talked it over with Kellie, and called the guy back up to give him directions to our house.
Monday morning my friend drove the Jetta into work, I deposited the check from my Beetle, wrote him a check for the Jetta. I brought it into work to adjust the power steering belt during lunch which was real loose. I also gave the car a once-over, and decided it wasn't too bad, just needed some TLC. I washed the poor thing off and drove home. I spent the next 4 hours cleaning out the inside of the car, it had been sitting in his yard for nearly a year with only a couple of trips to work over the previous summer.