I can’t believe I even thought about getting a car that wasn’t a Jetta.

I have loved Jettas for as long as I have been aware of cars.  Perhaps it’s the average, middle-class white girl in me.  Or perhaps I really have a taste for sophisticated German engineering.  Or maybe it’s just that the Drivers Wanted commercials brainwashed me (and the rest of my generation).  I don’t know why, but I do know that it’s true.  I appreciate the whole spectrum of them, from the ’80s to the 2000s.

When Zack and I found out on Thursday that my car had been deemed “a total loss,” he nearly immediately asked me what kind of car I wanted to replace it with.  ”Do you want another Jetta? Another diesel?” he asked while I was still at school.  Zack is a prize-winning internet searcher; I could see him in my mind’s eye, fingers impatiently tapping on the keyboard as he waited for me to list out some demands.  I hemmed and hawed around, not able to give him any specific parameters.  I said that I wanted another something small, something from a company that wasn’t circling around the proverbial drain, waiting to go under.  I wasn’t absolutely needing another Jetta, I said.  I would think about it some more, though.

Friday night, Zack showed me that he knew better than that.  I found him in the office, 3,000 tabs open on the firefox browser, all of them with Jettas for sale in the DFW that he thought I might be interested in.  I totally fought it at first.  I didn’t want to be pigeon-holed like that.  I mean, sure I like Jettas, but do I want to be The Jetta Girl?  We found a few that we both really liked, including one that was The Jetta. It is Everything I Loved About My Jetta + Everything I Ever Wanted In A Jetta That Mine Didn’t Have (except an iPod jack, which sadly I still don’t have).  I decided I’d call on them the next morning, and went to bed.

That morning I still wasn’t convinced that I needed another Jetta.  I spent the better part of an hour surfing around, looking at some 2-door Accords before I finally called to confirm that The Jetta was still hanging around.  I went to the dealership, went for a test drive, and man.  As soon as I felt the rumble of that diesel engine beneath my hands, I knew that I was sold again.  I said to the car salesman, “God I am so happy that my husband knows me better than I know myself,” as I eased on the gas and let out the clutch.  The car salesman just smiled, cause us VW people?  We’re such easy sells.