Do you ever get the feeling that car manufacturers somehow program their cars to self destruct immediately after the warranty expires? This is how I am starting to feel. The Jetta has just over 50,000 miles on it and that is when the warranty expired. Since then, we have had a series of problems with the car…

The driver’s door sensor that notifies you when the door is open has stopped working. This is not really a big deal, except for when it used to have no idea if the door was open or closed and would sound its audible alert while we were driving down the road and the door was clearly shut. This has stopped for the most part, and it acts as if the door is always shut even when open. This poses another problem, the tone telling you the lights are still on will now no longer work. I’ve left the lights on a few times already.

Next, the brake lights remained on even after turning the car off. This was the night we took our trip to Costco. We ran through the store quickly, so that the battery wouldn’t die and we wouldn’t be paged over the store’s system. This problem fixed itself on the drive home, and has not returned since.

Now yesterday the check engine light mysteriously appeared. This happened when I was driving in to work, and is still on as of right now. From my experience and from what others have said, this really isn’t that big of a deal. I’m hoping to take the car to some auto parts store in hopes that they will tell me the problem for free. VW wants close to $100 to run their diagnostics.

All of this is happening as the lease is running out, and we are forced to buy the car because of the mileage on it. Guess we will then decide to sell it and get something else, or just keep it and hope these are all just coincidence…