The Night the Lights Went Out in Jetta

My continuing fetish with ‘shit that goes wrong with machines’ has been stroked repeatedly lately like a dog lickin’ a … yyyeah. Whatever. I’m bugged.

This may sound absurd to you, but my issue is with the lights on Volkswagens.

It is astounding to me, and I am certain it will be to you, that lights on Volkswagens don't last. WTF am I talking about, you are certainly mumbling, even this early into a piece of writing.

I have noticed that when I see a car with one headlight out, or one taillight out, or one brake light out, it is almost always a Volkswagen Passat, Jetta, or Beetle. I don’t mean a little more than normal. I mean at least 80% of the cars I see that are photonically impaired are VWs. There are buttloads of these failures. (Buttload, you may be interested to know, is a literal translation of the Norsk/Dansk ‘assphul’ which means, well, the same thing as buttload.)

At first I thought, “faulty supplier. They’ll get it figured out shortly.” But the thing has gone on so long now (it’s been bothering me for a couple of years I guess), that I’m rather certain that it’s a profit-oriented maneuver.

Volkswagen charges a lot of money for headlights. And for tail lights. If you go to the autoparts store, you can replace them yourself for somewhat less money. But VW must have done studies and found that when their customers have a light failure, they take it back to the dealership. And the gouging begins.

The drivers of bugs are predominantly female; they are either young, say 16 – 30, or old, say 55 – 85 (“that crazy mom of mine went out and bought a Bug! You’d think she was sixteen to thirty!”) And I dare say that any men who drive Bugs aren’t going to be dirtying their hands under the hood.

And of course they’re all new cars. And people will take their new cars back to the dealership to get stuff fixed.

I have a lot more to say on this. Unfortunately. But I'm just going to hang onto it. I simply wanted to foment indignation, or at least foment awareness.

I’m telling you. Something’s going on. You watch the roads – you’ll see…