Magazine ad written by Tim Brunelle for the launch of the Volkswagen Phaeton working with art director Steve Yaffe.
Phun
I make terrible car choices, I just do. I’ll never be the person to pick a Toyota or a Honda as long as there’s something more interesting, a little “off” to be chosen. Give me the quirky, give me the complex engineering, give me anything but BORING. Unfortunately this just equals trouble. I mean honestly, the list of bad decisions is long; 2 Jaguars, a Cadillac Allante, a rusted out Roadmaster wagon, selling 2 W124s and 1 W126. But my latest, most recent bad decision was this: a 2005 Volkswagen V8 Phaeton. Ugh.
A sampling of some of the poor decisions, but certainly not all of them.
I was over on the miles on my Model 3 lease and it was due to get turned in. It was time to start looking for a new car. My latest job came to an abrupt end when the company that moved us from Utah to Pennsylvania went bankrupt. I was wary of car payments and wanted something I could pay cash for and keep for a year or two when, I hoped, I’d be settled into a new permanent role.
As I said before, a Toyota or Honda was never going to be on my list. Chatting up one of my car buddies he spouted out “Why not a Phaeton? They have cool engineering, they’ve definitely hit the bottom of depreciation and they were overbuilt.”
A nearly 20 year old VW packed to the hilt with some of the weirdest of Ferdinand Piëch’s ideas? Sounds terrible! I was in.
While I love the understated styling, the fact that you couldn’t tell this from a Passat unless you really were in the know was a big mistake, I think.
Phoolish
Big shock; there weren’t a lot of Phaetons out there. Fewer than 4,000 were ever sold in the USA.
I was on a contract, spending 5 days a week away from home. Not ideal, but it was income, a company I loved and a group of people I liked. They even paid for a hotel, food and gas – it could have been far worse. The income was a substantial cut – eliminating car payments was high on my priority list.
My contract job was in Reading, PA, which inexplicably has this Pagoda.
I found a beautifully maintained Phaeton that had all manner of very expensive maintenance done. Driving it the 2 hours home was a bit of a treat; more comfortable and far larger than the Model 3.
My husband joked “You’re way over there!”
It had a lovely V8 hum, which would raise to a gentle rumble if you floored it. I had to admit, I missed the sounds of an internal combustion engine. Especially a big V8.
Insurance was cheap and with my job paying for gas, I didn’t mind that I was averaging 17 MPG.
In my previous post about my 300D I said that car wanted to play. This car? It was a long distance runner, it wanted to run – not sprint. More than once I caught myself hitting 100 MPH on the PA Turnpike, first without noticing it. Then, once I realized how stable and smooth it was up there, I kept trying for it. No shimmy. No shudder. The car just kept calling out for more. Still makes me drool. To steal a line from Jaguar, this car was complete grace, space & pace.
Phamily
The Phaeton was perfect for family trips, more than once the 3 of us and our dog packed up and went to Cape May and my husband and I were eager to take it on an Autumn road trip through New England. But that would have to wait. Late summer of 2023 came and it was time to deliver our son to university. Just us and the Phaeton.
My son and I were banished from packing the car.
The air suspension in the Phaeton did a fantastic job of leveling out the weight of everything a person needs for school – plus about 20 pounds of chocolate I was able to provide him courtesy of my job’s company store. The V8 pulled along, clearly over laden, but willing.
It was an odd sensation coming back home without our son. The car was empty. The house was empty. Everything was so quiet. But we decided it was time to start dating again. Each other, that is. On our first childless date we spent the day at the Everhart museum.
Everhart Museum includes zoological displays, visual art, ethnological artifacts, fossils & American folk art. Image & caption from Wikipedia.
When we got into the car the garage stank of gas. We thought maybe someone bumped the snow blower pulling in and didn’t pay any attention to it.
Later, after the museum, the car itself stank of gas and again after lunch. Suddenly my pasta wasn’t sitting so well. That’s when things started to go to crap.
Phuel
Returning home I saw a puddle in the garage and sure enough, it was gas. The car was leaking. Thus began a 5 month ordeal of replacing the gas tank. So much for driving the car throughout New England, thankfully we still had the Model 3. Suffice it to say a low production number, 20 year old VW has very little available in the way of parts or people who know how to work on them. At least out in Northeast PA.
It all probably would have gone better if the VW dealer I spoke to was honest and admitted they didn’t know anything about Phaetons or how to get parts for it. A used tank was finally found in Alabama just after Thanksgiving and I had the car back in January. I swore to never cast my shadow over that dealership’s door again.
Phrig
In that time my contract came to an end and I was snapped up by another one…120 miles away. So now my daily commute was 240 miles. In a car that got 17MPG. And this place wasn’t paying for my gas or putting me up in a hotel.
We agreed that I had to get at least 1 full year out of the car before I even considered anything else, and I have to admit, it was great on the highway and great in the snow. But the amount of money I was spending on gas was equal to a monthly car payment and it was killing me. Then the rear window regulator gave up the ghost and down the window went, then the “infotainment” (also called a ZAB)- where EVERY function for this car lived- started to die.
I can see why this design was chosen for noise isolation…but I still think it’s asinine
I ended up dismantling the door panel to repair the window regulator – a rather stupid design using plastic gears and a braided wire all mounted to an aluminum inner door skin that you couldn’t remove without unbolting the window from the lift. A Mercedes-Benz 300D this was not. Not that I expected a Phaeton to be designed to be worked on, but I didn’t expect something as simple as a window regulator to be some Rube Goldberg BDSM fantasy.
ePh This
Just as I was finishing fixing that, the catch for the door pull slipped and fell down into the door. I said F it, and that’s how the door stayed shut for good. At least it was back together.
The infotainment was all Poltergeist, to say nothing of my back. All this driving, stop and go traffic, plus 20 year old seats aggravated an old weight lifting injury. One night I couldn’t sleep I was in so much pain and the next morning I couldn’t pick my feet up off the floor.
They’re heeerrrrreeee…
There was serious risk of losing my mobility without some kind of intervention. I was fine with the intervention, but I knew what was aggravating the situation.
I slowly looked for another car. Not really eager, but I thought it may be time. By the summer of 2024 my husband and I swapped cars. He got the Phaeton and I got his Prius. I hated the Prius. But it had radar cruise control which was a help on my back, however, I felt guilty shoving the Phaetons appetite for premium on him.
The Prius is a car that is perfect for so many people. I am not one of them.
Eventually I decided enough was enough. By January of 2025 I asked if he would be terribly upset if I decided to replace the Phaeton and he said no.
So I did, with a Cadillac Lyriq.
It’s basically like a Phaeton for 2025 but without the insane fuel cost.
In case anyone is wondering; yes the Phaeton is listed for sale, no it hasn’t sold yet and SuperCruise is a pretty nifty system that has made my commute far more bearable.
Related CC reading:
That was the decade when Volkswagen became the ALL ‘People’s Car’ with the introduction of the Phaeton at the top, and the City Rabbit at the bottom. That extreme price range for one individual marque outdid Alfred Sloan’s ‘car for every purse & purpose’ under 5 different brands at GM decades earlier. 30 years before the Phaeton, if someone ever said a Volkswagen would outgun a Cadillac at the top, they would have been kicked out of the bar!!