I swore I would never own one
In the years that I worked in the lube bay at Ray's Chevron I saw countless vehicles of all makes and models. It didn't take long for me to develop a distaste for Volkswagens and Audis. Every car owner has different desires; I prize reliability, durability, and ease of maintenance. VWs are not known for any of these things. They break down often and are expensive to fix. I swore that I would never own one.
That being said, through a series of events I won't get into on this blog, I now own a 2002 VW Passat. It has countless things wrong with it, and I'm trying to make the best of it by fixing bits and bobs without spending any money.
VW has been just as successful as Apple in creating a cult of customers that don't even consider other brands. Because they never truly consider other options, these customers deal with daily problems they consider normal and unavoidable that aren't issues for other brands. One such issue is that any VW over 2 years old will have numerous broken plastic bits throughout the interior and even the engine compartment. The broken bits seem minor, so most people just deal with it.
Our Passat has so many broken plastic bits, the car is literally falling apart. One such bit is a plastic cover in the rear centre console. In just a couple of minutes, I was able to model a simple cover on Solidworks. I printed the model out of black PLA on an old Ultimaker Original in my studio (the printer has almost as many broken bits as my car!). It fit perfectly on the first try. It's not perfect, but it took me under 10 minutes to design and cost nothing.
What do you think?