Ze Car!

Yes, you read that right. We have a car! Well, technically speaking we don't have a car yet, because so far we haven't picked it up. We did buy one, however. Or promised to buy one anyway, because so far money hasn't changed hands. But it will, very soon, and then we'll have a car. Once we pick it up, that is. You know what I mean.

It's a 1988 VW Polo 86C Steilheck in blue metallic.

I never thought I'd buy a car off eBay, but then again I never thought I'd drive to Mongolia in a crapmobile and here we are. According to the small fuzzy pictures that we have and the description of the car on eBay, it might just be what we're looking for.

So, why'd we pick a Polo? Well, for one thing we're "Ze Germans" so we figured we'd have to drive some good old-fashioned German Engineering. Once you've got your heart set on a German car, there aren't that many options with 1-litre engines and the Polo is the most obvious choice. This is particularly true if you don't want to go with a Corsa and I really didn't want to go with a Corsa. In addition the Steilheck version of the Polo has the advantage of having a pretty big boot, particularly after you've flipped the rear seats.

Let's have a look at our particular Polo.

Ze Good

• On the pictures it looks to be in fairly good shape.


• It has TÜV and AU (MOT for you Brits), so even if we have to fix a bunch of things, at least we won't have to pay extra money for stupid tests


• Several parts were recently replaced, including the head gaskets which are apparently a major point of failure for the Polo.


• It has a CD Player! This thing is almost as well equipped as an S-Class.


• Apparently it has H4 lamps installed. I have no idea what that means and I'm too lazy to Google it, but it sounds great, so I'm listing it under "Good".


• The car comes with three doors. This is very useful. Even if two doors should fail, we'll still be able to get into the car. Maybe even out of it!

Ze Bad

• It isn't white. I really wanted a white one, mostly because that would have been an excellent base for all the stickers. Still, at least it isn't silver.


• It doesn't have those cool double headlamps, that some models have. I really wanted those double headlamps. I guess we'll have to bolt some on by hand.


• Winter tires. July 21st isn't exactly in the middle of winter.

Ze Ugly

• So far there is no ugly. But I'm sure there will be. Once there is some ugly, we'll let you know and post color pictures

Martin will pick the car up next week. Let's hope this is the one. If not, we'll just eBay it and get another one.