California 🇺🇸 ~ “Our VW Jetta TDI Story and our 21 Spanish Mission Visits”

• May 27, 2025
• By Pen
• 1 Comment

OUR STORY 

Did anybody else own a Volkswagen during this unfortunate time?

Here is our story…..

When I met Daryl, he owned a 2013 VW Jetta. After I moved to California (I lived with his mom on her property, in a 5th wheel)….to get married. Daryl was still working, and I was not.

Every Friday, after he got home from work, we took off in that Jetta and took long and short road trips. Sometimes he would take a Monday off, for the longer trips, like from Southern California, where we lived, to San Fransicsco. We had a ball and that car was really great! We have the best memories!

Then, Daryl got the letter in the mail about what was going on with Volkswagen. We couldn’t believe it! FRAUD, related to the TDI Diesel Jetta? We had to turn his car into a dealership, on a bit-back program, by a certain date. This was not a suggestion. Yes, VW would give him money for the car, but it wasn’t that much and it certainly was a bad situation.

Luckily, I had driven to California, in my Infiniti, plus Daryl had a pickup truck, used to pull the boat. We wouldn’t be car-less, but Daryl, at the time had a long commute to his job, plus he was retiring, so we could leave to travel full-time, after we got married. We were looking at selling all the vehicles and the boat, not acquiring any new ones.

Anyway, with a date looming on returning the Jetta, we took a little vacation and went on a fabulous California Spanish-Mission adventure. There are 21 of them, all up and down California: the closest to our home in SoCal was San Juan Capistrano; like 30 minutes away, to the furthest one, being up in San Francisco; Solano 1823.

We waited on the missions that were in closer proximity to our SoCal home (like the ones we could easily do on a weekend drive), and focused on visiting the Missions that were farthest, North. So off we went! We got up super, to begin our road trip. Getting through LA traffic is a trick. The earlier, the better, then we were on our way.

We had so much fun, and enjoyed visiting all 21 Missions, eventually, and so appreciated the restoration efforts and the history, of each one.

So, on our last big drive, in the Jetta, while up North, we had already visited the San Francisco Missions, and were making our way back down, South, when we stopped at our last mission, before heading back home. This would be THE FIRST MISSION, built; Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, and where The mission trail in California began, on July 16, 1769.

Daryl had been doing the majority of the driving, for a few days, so after our visit, being the nice person I am, suggested he could just relax; even take a nap, and I would drive for the rest of the day. So, we jumped in the Jetta and headed out the exit road. It was a two-way, narrow, curvy road, and a little dark, though the California sun was shining, because it was shaded by old oak trees. Just as I made my way, cautiously, around the last curve, to the main thoroughfare, all of a sudden a vehicle came quickly around the corner, from that main road. It was literally in my lane and driving way too fast. All I could do was put the brakes on and the next thing we knew, that car was up on top of our Jetta’s hood!

Nobody was hurt, but it took the driver of the other car, and Daryl, to pry my car door open so I could get out! The other driver was one of the Missions Priest! He was very apologetic and he admitted to his reckless driving. He said he rarely even sees any cars departing the Mission, as he comes and goes, so with the shaded darkness and narrowness of the road, he got complacent. We were able to un-hook the cars from each other, somehow, and with some pushing and pulling, managed to get fenders and our driver door in better position so we could drive, because the Jetta fired right up. Fortunately, the damage was all cosmetic. Whew. We had gotten insurance info from the Father and many apologies. I got many photos with my phone and documented everything very well. We did have to stop at a DMV and file the accident report, before we could head back home, though.

When we got back home, we got the Jetta in for an estimate. There was a lot of damage, to the tune of $7,000! Daryl submitted to his insurance company and got the ball rolling. Soon we got a big fat check. Of course Daryl teased me for a long time on this: We weren’t even married yet and I was wrecking his car! Ha!

Fortunately, the body shop was very busy and couldn’t get us in right away, so I got to thinking….. (you know me) I told Daryl, why don’t you call the dealership we were assigned to, by VW and ask the question: “Does any front-end damage to the Jetta, cause the payout to be less than what you were quoted, originally?” (We knew enough about the fraud, that these cars would never be driven again).

The answer back, was no. The only requirement was the Jetta needed to be able to be driven to its appointment and parked on its own power. No problem, there…… so we skipped repairing the Jetta, and added seven grand to our full-time travel fund. That was a nice bonus we had not anticipated… a few months later, we were married, and not long after that we sold off items, stored the rest and then Daryl and I set out on our 4.5 year adventure of traveling the world!

Here is the info, if interested in reading, that just came through; all these years later (since 2016 for us) a report on VW and how some people really messed up and were charged, criminally.

Also, here is my Photo Website on Smugmug of all 21 Spanish Mission visits we made. (we didn’t have the blog, yet)

https://picsbypen.smugmug.com/Places/North-AmericaLife/United-StatesLife/CaliforniaLife/21-Spanish-Missions

DIESSELGATE 

Dieselgate Managers Convicted
A German court convicted four former Volkswagen officials of fraud, yesterday, in the decade old “Dieselgate” scandal. Two executives working in engine technology received sentences of several years in prison; the others received suspended sentences.

The US Environmental Protection Agency discovered the scandal in 2015, revealing VW had installed so-called defeat devices in models dating as far back as 2009. The software enabled vehicles to illegally pass diesel-efficiency standards in controlled environments, while producing up to 40 times as much pollution in real-life driving conditions. More than 11 million cars, worldwide, were impacted by the fraud, which engineers said they enacted under time frame and budget constraints.

The scandal—which cost VW $34B in fines and legal fees—is thought to have expedited a global shift to battery-powered cars. Before 2015, diesel cars accounted for over half the European market. They now make up less than 10% of the market.