joy and shadows

Good advice all. :) We have a subscription to Consumer Reports and we've been gauging every car carefully. It's true that some of the earlier model VW's, esp the mid-nineties models, were junk - they were unreliable and had a whole host of electrical problems. VW switched the factory out of where it was in Mexico to somewhere else and the quality jumped considerably. The late model VW's are supposed to be very good, at least CR thinks so. :)

And yes - good care of the car makes all the difference in the world. :)