Saving the environment by Renovating the Little Red Golf
11:13PM, June 05, 2008 - [ Permalink]
We purchased our 1993 Volkswagen Golf TD (Turbo Diesel) back in October of 1999. The car had 155,000 kilometres (96,300 miles) on it. Other than a few cosmetic issues (flecks in the paint), the car, which became known as "The Little Red Golf"", was fine.
For nine years we said we would take care of the paint flecks, and at one point a few years ago, we tried to do the repairs ourselves, spending a day grinding, sanding and painting. Well, I can safely say that we are not particularly skilled at bodywork.
Finally, it got to the point where we had to make a decision: Do we keep the Golf, that has served us so well thus far, fix it up, decide to drive it into the ground, look for a new used car, a new car, or investigate car sharing options like VirtuCar.
We quickly eliminated VrtuCar, as Tracey does lots of belly dance performances and lessons that are pretty randomly timed, which would make using the service a bit tough.
We went to our garage (Rolland Levesque & Sons, 227 Cumberland St, Ottawa), whom over the years we have come to trust and asked them to have a good look at the car.
They evaluated the car and they said that as long as we got the rust and repairs taken care of, the car would last a long, long time. The catch; the cost of the body work, the paint job, replacing the front and back windshield, and various other repairs would be enough to buy a new used car.
The fact that it would be difficult to find a new/used car that got the same milage as our car (better than a Prius on highway), as well as some environmental thoughts - a new car needs to be manufactured and delivered - which means you start off, as Wired.com says, with a pretty serious carbon debt:
"As Matt Power notes in this month's issue of Wired, hybrids get great gas mileage but it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make a Toyota Prius. Because there are about 113,000 BTUs of energy in a gallon of gasoline, the Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it reaches the showroom. Think of it as a carbon debt -- one you won't pay off until the Prius has turned over 46,000 miles or so."
That said, 1,000 gallons is enough fuel to fill our Little Red Golf's tank over 69 times, or to drive around the circumference of the Earth (over 40,000 kilometres or nearly 25,000 miles) almost one and a half times - at our current rate of driving, will take us more than six years to drive that distance.
The final bonus - nearly all the money we spent on fixing up the car stayed local.
Now, the process wasn't without some annoyances - while the garage took roughly a week to do their part of the work, the body shop took three bloody weeks to paint the car - I have a funny feeling that our garage probably won't deal with that company any more.
However, I think we have made the correct choice. Our car gets excellent milage (between 17 and 21 LPK / 40 and 50 MPG), has been very good to us over the years, and I think it was only fair that we clean her up to return the favour.
More photos: Two, Three and Four, and another blog post about this.
