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[This was originally posted in 2016 - updates are marked where they were added further down the page]
In celebration of my Jettta's 16th birthday I thought I would take the time to put this post togther.
I'm going to make the (possibly controversial) claim that this is the world's most travelled VW Jetta TDI. By this I mean the Jetta that has been to the most places, not the highest odometer reading (there are cars with more than double the number of kilometers).
I doubt there are any others that have been to the variety of unusual destinations that this car has accumulated.
This first picture shows it just a few days old after buying it new from McKenna Motor cars in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. At the time of purchase (November 2000) it had just 72 miles on it. Here it is parked next to our other car (a 1990 Corrado G60 - a great car that I was sorry to part with after 7 years).
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The original sales description as stuck on the car windscreen.
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The original sales price. We ended up driving it away for exactly $21k (including all the extra charges that are not listed on this sticker). Your ability to haggle in Hawaii is very limited compared to elsewhere. Either you want the car or you don't. They know full well that it will cost you $1000-2000 to ship a car from the mainland (plus all the hassle) so in general will not move much on price. In true US style, we got a $1000 overdraft from the bank as soon as we qualified for one, withdrew this as cash and used it as our downpayment, borrowing the remaining $20k from the VW credit bank...
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The confirmation of the orginal mileage - just a couple of test drives and that's it!
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Considering what it looks like inside now, all I can say is "wow", when I look at this picture.
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At the time we were living in Paradise Park in the Puna district. The fun thing about looking at my son in this picture is that he just passed his driving test a couple of weeks ago. He spent much of his practice driving in the Jetta and it was also the first car he drove after passing his test!
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On the summit of Mauna Kea. This is the highest the Jetta has ever been at about 4205m (the height of the ridge in the background which we also drove along).
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Outside the JCMT just below the summit of Mauna Kea. The engine very definately notices the altitude here, much less power than normal at low revs (at higher revs the turbo compensates).
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This is the furthest south picture I have. The start of the Ainapo trail up Moauna Loa (I hiked up to the top of Mauna Loa in the background with the two friends in the picture). This is latitude 19° 20'. The Jetta has also been to South Point (18° 54' 52" is the latitude of the car park there) but I didn't take a picture of it since at the time there didn't seem to be anything unusual about it... This is the southernmost point of the US.
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After moving from Hawaii to Alberta we shipped the car in advance to Seattle and drove the rest of the way. This is a short stop on the I-90.
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Montana.
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In Alberta (house hunting if I recall this picture correctly)
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Drumheller, Alberta.
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This being Canada, it gets really cold! This plot (from the Environment Canada website) shows the official Lethbridge airport temperature at about the time (07:00)that I drove past it and hence this is the lowest temperature the Jetta has ever seen.
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Temperature was about -37C when this picture was taken. Although I usually had it garaged it would just about start after a night outside at these temperatures. At work it was parked out in an exposed carpark. There were days when the temperature never went above -25C and after 10 hours it would need to glow for about 1 minute before struggling to life. You had to let it idle for another minute before it would generate enough power to be able to drive away. The problem was always the battery's ability to crank the engine, not the ability of the engine to start.
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Our first road trip - up the Alaksa highway, then the Dempster and finally onto the Arctic Ocean to Tuktoyaktuk. This is described in detail here
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The start of the Alaska Highway
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Northern British Columbia.
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Not far from Dawson in the Yukon. Dempster highway turn up ahead.
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The start of the Dempster highway.
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The long, beautiful, drive north.
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Quite literaly, in the middle of nowhere.
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One of my all time favorite pictures. This is leaving the Yukon at its northern border (entering the Northwest Territories).
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Crossing the frozen Mackenzie river (note the summer boat up high on the river bank).
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Leaving Inuvik on the frozen Mackenzie river - the ice road runs up the river and then out in the Beaufort Sea.
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It's cold in northern Canada!
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On the ice road - Newton's laws of motion are very obervable here - things that are going in a particular direction tend to want to carry on going in that direction! Your ability to apply a force to change the direction or speed of travel is quite limited...
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On the Arctic Ocean north of the northern Canadian coast line.
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Made it to Tuktoyaktuk. (Since we did this drive, a permanent road has been build on land).
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The northernmost point on the Canadian road system that you can drive to. There is nothing beyond the horizon until you get to the north pole (and then Russia).
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The GPS is perched on the front bumper.
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The evidence: 69° 27' 19". I always assumed this would be furthest north I would ever drive to, but that turned out not to be the case, almost exactly 10 years later, we would beat this record.
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The Aurora Borealis.
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Heading back south.
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The only time we needed snow chains.
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In the Klondike.
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The Sliver trail Inn in Mayo.
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We managed to cross the border to Alaska, just so we could say we had driven in Alaska!
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The next "mega-tour" was from Alberta to Florida. This set two personal records: the longest non-stop drive (4335km in 40.5 hours, there were 2 of us driving, swapping every couple of hours) and the furthest travelled in 24hrs (2593km). This used 211.5 litres of diesel, ie 4.87l/100km (48.3mpg). Average speed (including fuelling stops) was 107km/h - basically we had the cruise control on 130km/h for most of the way.
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I had driven down for a conference in Orlando, the rest of my family joined me at the end of the conference and we then spent 6 weeks working our way along the Gulf coast to New Orleans and then back north.
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The start (or finish) of route 1 (with the Jetta strategically parked in the background).
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The (sort of) southern most point on the US mainland 24°32'47" (ie. about 5° north of South Point on Hawaii's Big Island.)
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You'll have to take my word for it, but this is Mobile, Alabama.
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Various state borders on the way home.
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The next long run was the move from Canada to Germany.
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At the port in Halifax.
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And the other end in Bremerhaven.
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In Freiburg, Germany - still with the Hawaii plates on the front - that got quite a bit of attention for the 6 months until I re-registered the car!
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The last picture with Alberta plates on the back - that is Lake Lucerne down below.
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Ferry to Sicily.
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On the banked track at Monza! I was very nervous taking this picture as we weren't really supposed to be on the track (they left the gate open after closing time...) and I was worried about someone coming round the corner at 250km/h... But I couldn't resist the opportunity to get the picture!
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The Adriatic sea.
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This is on Sardinia.
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Our summer vacation route for 2010.
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Camping outside Ljubljana, Slovenia.
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As the hotel sign says, this is Sofia, Bulgaria.
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The Romanian/Bulgarian border. Just north of here is the furthest east the Jetta has been (Update May 2018: at the time of writing, see further down the page for our Georgian trip) at 28°38'52"E (compared to the furthest west, I can't remember exactly where that would have been, but the Jetta was certainly at the Kona airport pickup zone which would be 156°02'26"W).
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Back in the Swiss alps - I think this is the Süsten Pass.
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My record distance on one tank of diesel. This is close to Bayreuth in Germany. I'm pretty certain the engine spluttered as I pulled into the gas station.
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So, the tank holds pretty much exactly 64l when filled from almost completely empty...
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On the German island of Rügen.
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A trip through the Baltic states.
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On the ferry to Finland.
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Our trip to the Nordkapp.
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Back across the Arctic Circle, just a couple of weeks short of 10 years after the last time on the Dempster.
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The Finnish/Russian boarder zone (we drove to within about 500m of Russia).
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I'll let you look up where this is, they aren't kidding when they say wilderness though!
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I think this sign says more than anything else about how far away from "normal" parts of the world we are.
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The dirtiest the Jetta has ever been. It took about a year to get all the door seals clean again!
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The view over towards the Nordkapp (which is about where the sun is).
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Back at the Arctic Ocean (sort of - the Barents Sea really).
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The Nordkapp - note the Earth sphere monument at the back right as proof of the location.
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This is significantly further noth than both Tuktoyaktuk and Prudhoe bay. So I think there is a very good chance this is the furthest north a US model Jetta has ever been (although obviously any number of European Jettas (Boras) will have been here.
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I drew the red line on the map at the latitude of the Nordkapp. From what I can see on the internet, there is one seasonal ice road in Russia (Siberia) that goes further north. This is the furthest north you can drive on a paved road connected to a major road system though.
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The actual northernmost spit of land is in the background here.
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In the process of getting to the Nordkapp I also set another unexpected record - this is the lowest the Jetta has ever been. The road tunnel to access the island of Magerøya (where the Nordkapp is located) goes under the sea and drops down to 212m below sea level (for comparison Death Valley is only -85m, but the Dead Sea is significantly lower at -430m).
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As an interlude from the ice and snow, this was in the Autobahn just north of Karlsruhe in Germany in July 2015 where Germany set a new national record for the hottest temperature ever recorded. I started driving in the north with the temperature at about 20C and just watched with astonishment as it kept climbing. I thought the thermometer had gone wrong until I stopped to refuel, it was like getting out into a blast furnace! The temperature is consisten with the official values for that day - this sets the record for the hottest the Jetta has ever seen (with -39C as the lowest, that gives a range of just over 80C!).
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Back in Finland a year later for a skiing vacation.
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This competes with the Yukon sign picture for being one of my favorites - a winter wonderland!
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These tours to the Arctic certainly get you used to drivng on snow - thousands of kilometers on snow covered roads in total.
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October 2016. It has taken just short of 16 years to get to here. I wonder how much longer it will last? Over the last year or two the first couple of signs of age have appeared - a front wheel bearing needed replacing, as did one of the gearbox output shaft seals and both rear brake calipers. However, the engine and gearbox (other than the seal) are completely untouched internally (even externally it has only been the MAF (>10 years ago) and the alterantor diode pack (~6 years ago)). Pretty amazing reliability really. All I do is relace the oil and filter every 16,000 km and follow the other service intervals recommended in the service manual.
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UPDATE: as of here the original page is extended with trips from 2017 & 2018.
Our longest skiing trip so far, we started of in Bulgaria, then a couple of days in Erzurum (eastern Turkey) and finally the Georgian resort of Gudauri.
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Heading back through the Balkans.
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Turkisch immigration wasn't as bad as I had feared. Numerous checkpoint and a huge border complex, but in less than an hour we were through.
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Crossing the Bosporus
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A new continent - the third one for the Jetta (assuming you follow the somewhat unjustifiable convention of calling "Europe" a separate continent to Asia) - so it's now been in North America, Europe and Asia (plus Oceana - an even more artificial concept than the "European continent").
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About 1000km later we made it to Erzurum (which used to be the easternmost outpost of the Roman empire).
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Crossing the mountain pass to Georgia.
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And no, Atlanta isn't anywhere near here :-)
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Not to long after entering Georgia there is the turn for Armenia.
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My favorite sign of the whole trip. This really tells you we are a long way from home. Baku is on the Caspian sea and is basically where this road leads to. We just went the 90 remaining kilometers to Tiblisi (the new "furthest east" at 44°47'56"E for the Jetta is Tiblisi central train station. As mentioned above, the furthest West is the Kona airport pickup zone, 156°02'26"W. Since 156°+44°>180° I can say the Jetta has been more than half way round the globe!). The route to Tehran goes through either Armenia or Azerbaijan.
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We spent one day when the weather was too bad to ski driving up the Georian Military Road whcih appears on numerous "most dangerous roads in the world" lists. Whilst I wouldn't describe it as particuarly dangerous you do definately have to concentrate when driving as it is steep and narrow with a generally poor road surface and numerous unlit tunnels. This picture shows a side road up to the Gergeti Trinity Church. We only managed to drive part way up as the road was really for 4WD vehicles and I was worried about finding the road blocked with snow and having to back down a very hazardous route (I think you can get up in normal car though, I wasn't bottoming out on the section we drive).
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An amusing sign... This is just short of the Russian border (which we couldn't cross since you need a visa).
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One of the numerous unlit tunnels. The danger (besides the invisible pot holes in the tunnels) are the 40+ ton trucks driving through them which appear out of nowhere in the darkness.
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Close to maximum dirtyness!
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Back in Turkey on the way home.
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Another trip to Scandinavia for skiing. Ferry to Oslo.
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Crossing from Norway into Sweden.
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Crossing the Arctic circle again.
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A very wintery entrance to Finland
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Crossing northern Finland.
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On the way back home (this picture was taken in Poland) I managed to get every single warning light on. The check engine light is always on (and has been for ~15 years) due to the glow plug connectors. After 1181 km the car needs more fuel. After constantly washing grime of the windscreen the washer needs refilling and finally the brake pad warning light came on during the drive back (correctly, they really were worn down to the warning indicator).
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UPDATE: as of here the original page is extended with a trip to the UK in May 2018.
So where is this?
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I was getting these pictures with Linus. He jumped out of the car and positioned himself ahead or waited for me to go to the nearest roundabout and come back. In this case Parliament Square is just one giant roundabout so i just drove round in circles until he had the picture. Unfortunately Big Ben is undergoing major renovations and is almost unrecognisable.
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From Lambeth bridge things are a bit more recognisable
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Heading back home
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In the Eurotunnel train. The contrast with the Swiss Autoverladung trains is amazing (you basically just drive onto open, flatbed wagons in Switzerland). No wonder the rolling stock cost so much to design and build...
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We made an effort to stop at the country signs each time we crossed a border on the way home.
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The Atomium in Brussels incase you are wondering.
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To be continued...
