I am curious as to how many people are replacing there VW's with Elements like myself. I had tons of problems with the VW and had to ditch her for a vehicle with a good reputation like Honda. It was a 2001 Jetta VR6 which I really did like except for all the trips to the dealer.

Yep... I'm replacing my 1996 Jetta GL with a Green EX 4wd

I loved my Jetta but got tired of the crap I've had to go through keeping it running.

Looking forward to getting my E but I have a long way to wait.
Mine won't be in until July/August.....

Doh!

I am a huge VW fan even with all the issues. I have my E in addition to my '02 GTI 337--special 25th anniversary edition--only 1500 in the US. Another great car to drive. My E is the practical car and the VW is my little race car! :P

I bought my E cause I could not wait till 2005 for the VW Microbus. I still want a Microbus.... I don't like hearing about VW's and??? mantainence. I love my E but I will want a Microbus. What will I do in 2005 :?:

Buy what you love. Love is about looking past the imperfections. :)

I was thinking about the Microbus as well...but with the price of just the Eurovan with weekender package being way out of my price range...I'm sure the Microbus will be as well.

As for the E, I can't wait till June when it'll be sitting in my driveway. It was supposed to replace my Passat wagon (my second VW), but my partner's taking over the Passat (currently a Ford Taurus owner) and I get the E for driving to work and going camping everyother week or month.

I've also got an old 78 Camper Bus that I was going to restore and go camping in....but the last thing I want to do after work or the weekends is figure out what else on the bus needs fixing just to keep it on the road....so it'll probably go up for sale, or I'll keep till the new Microbus comes out and it's value goes up (like what happend to Beetles when then new one came out), then I'll either consider selling or send it out to someone else to restore for me......but for now, the E will be my new baby.

[quote:75823c4849="pedsflightrn"]I am a huge VW fan even with all the issues. I have my E in addition to my '02 GTI 337--special 25th anniversary edition--only 1500 in the US. Another great car to drive. My E is the practical car and the VW is my little race car! :P[/quote:75823c4849]

do you put super plus in your GTI? or will the super do?

I still have my '78 Westfalia Camper Bus... I must love big boxes on wheels, but I did buy the 4WD Element to be able to camp on the beach something I can't do with the VW!

I bought my 78 bus to go camping in and learn to work on aircooled engines. The bus broke down after a month of ownership which meant no camping....since no camping, no interest in aircooled engines. The month I did get to drive it.....I loved it!!!

Now it's a play gym for my nephew when he comes over. Pop the top and let him pretend he's camping.

As soon as the E comes, I'll probably push it to the street and slap a forsale sign on it....or push it to the side of the driveway and then maybe get interested in fixing it up. I'm thinking the E will be perfect for weekends hunting out junkyards for cheap bus parts.

migrated from a 93 eurovan.

yep- 2001 Red Sport Beetle

I still own a 1980 VW BUS\\camper (westy)... Anyone intersted in buying it..
I loved driving it and camping in it but driving that thing through the mountains was kinda scarey at times becuase it is soooo underpowered. Never left me stranded tho, I'll giver that.

In the seventies (says he, stroking his white beard) :wink: , I had two VW buses, both the old and the "new" model.

We named the "new" one "Fat Albert" after the Bill Cosby character (As in "Here come Fat Albert, Hee Hee Hee!) It took him a while to get going, but then, with that soft ride, he just seemed to "Hee Hee Hee" down the road.

Most of my driving in it was down the flat roads through the NJ Pine Barrens to the shore (Middle seat replace by a playpen - no kid's seats in those "frontier days!).

The though of possibly driving it in the mountains still gives me the shudders!

The GTI 337, definatly a sweet car, I love VW as well but I have to wait till they get their quality control back in order before I get another one. I do miss the German car feel. How about the new R32 AWD.


[quote:f082fbde01="pedsflightrn"]I am a huge VW fan even with all the issues. I have my E in addition to my '02 GTI 337--special 25th anniversary edition--only 1500 in the US. Another great car to drive. My E is the practical car and the VW is my little race car! :P[/quote:f082fbde01]

In December of 2001, I HAD TO HAVE a VW Cabrio.....what was I thinking! LOL

Anyway, I loved the little car, but not very practical for my purposes down the road...i.e. starting a family. Unless it isn't horribly wrong to toss teh kids in the back seat with the top down....just kidding....

Well, my husband and I are probably going to start down the road of becoming parents, and I HAD TO HAVE the E....so yes, The E replaced my VW......of course, my dear husband still has his 2002 VW Jetta.... :) :)

[quote:dad1778e0e="ShaneS"]How about the new R32 AWD.[/quote:dad1778e0e]

Anyone else kinda think 241HP in a Golf is a bit much? Maybe I'm just jealous cuz my V6 Passat only has 190HP. There is definitely a market link between the Element and VW - I've noticed alot of people on VWVortex and other VW forums have expressed interest. Admittedly, I've been insanely lucky, the V6 Passat is one of the only current VW models not to have major maintenance issues.

The Microbus is also in my sights, but it will have to go a few years in production before I'll think about it seriously. The Touareg is also pretty cool, and a real off-road performer.

Still, I'm looking forward to Honda reliability with our Element. But honestly, I'm pretty happy to be driving my 4-motion while she has fun in the E.

Yup. 96 Passat wagon.
Oddly enough, the Element feels peppier with 160 hp vs. the 178 of the Passat. The car in general I was pretty happy with, drove great but the trips to the dealer were always $300, $700 and more! At least a couple times/year. I replaced the driver's side electric window regulator 4 times!!! WTF!...at 150 bucks/pop. Forget about working on it yourself, everything was proprietary. I had the transmission fluid changed by a third party Porsche guy, and the Santa Barbara dealer wouldn't tell him the fluid capacity to fill to... I had to take it into the dealer. It had 150k on it and the torque converter was going. The dealer said they wouldn't just change the torque converter but would have to change the whole transmission. $4500 minimum. The car's KBB value was only around $5k. The leather interior was flawless...I had lexoled it monthly and kept it either garaged or covered. Cosmetically it was beautiful, but I wouldn't buy another.
Love my Element!

Sold my 2002 Beetle (Color Concept) when I got my Element. My wife's still driving her '99 Beetle, so we still have a VW in the family.

The only problem I experienced was a clear coat issue on the hood, that VW took care of. My wife's car had the popular 'window regulator' issue. She paid for it initially (out of warranty), but VW reimbursed all her costs.

All in all, our VW experiences are/were pretty good. Honda so far is meeting/exceeding them.

Funny this should come up. Check my signature here ;-)

I have always thought the E was the modern day version of the microbus, but obviously with some major improvements performance wise. This is the main reason I bought it. I was actually kicking around the idea of getting another bus and keeping my Civic for my everyday ride, but once I drove the E..I was hooked.

All you folks have such great ideas about mods etc, that I am in the formulating stage of how to make the E that "back end" camper like the bus as well. The gentleman that came up with the PVC bed frame is a genious, and I have ideas about how to use that style for making closets and tables, etc.

The E is too new to me to start drilling holes in where they were not designed, so I think this can be done as a build the camper in in a few mins when you need it kind of thing.

That will be my winter project, for now..I am having too much fun taking the E out on the road!

For anyone who had to pay for those horrible window regulators in their late model VW's, I just recieved a letter the other day about a class action suit and I believe it goes beyond the expectation of the 7 year extended warranty of the regulators, possibly rental cars and all that crap.

Just bought my Element last week, but still own my Golf 4 VR6 GTI! VW's and Honda's are completely different in many ways, especially comparing the E to a GTI.

I bought the Element for practicality, and so I'd have something to drive in the winter. My GTI being about 2" off the ground just doesn't cut it:)

I love the E for everything that it's intended for. I do miss the German quality when it comes to the interior, although the E is still quite nice. The overall build quality on the Honda does seem very good though.

As far as 241hp in a Golf...bring it on! VW needs to do this. They're going to get left behind by companies like Subaru(WRX Sti-300hp), and Mitsubishi(Evo-271hp) if they wouldn't have marketed the R32 here in the US.

Owning the R32 and the E would be just perfect!:)

Steve

I replaced my 7th VW, a '99 Passat. The E really embodies a lot of what originally attracted me to my 1st (a '70 orange bug) and subsequent VW's, simplicity and functionality. The designers of my Passat had woefully forgotten alot about them and the complexity of the car resulted in $5,000 in repairs over the last two years. The Honda reputation for reliability really was a factor in my decision.

'70 Bug
'82 Rabbit Pickup
'85 Scirocco
'87 GTI 16V
'90 Carrado G60
'95 Jetta GLX
'99 Passat 1.8t

8)

Actually, it's still sitting in the driveway. It runs but really needs some serious attention. I love it though. It was my first car (bus) and I have had some great times with it. The E reminds me of the old buses too.

Someone posted an ingenious idea on here a couple of weeks ago about making the E a poptop. I can totally picture it and I wish I could buy it now. It wouldnt even need any retrofitting. Like they said, just mount a fiberglass shell and floor to the roof rack mounts, and use the skylight as an access hatch. That persons PVC bed frame is awesome though. I will be making one of those one of these days.

Boy I'm glad you asked this question as I was also curious as to prior vw ownership. I had spent ~ 2 yrs rebuilding an 'beautiful' '76 westy (including new engine that was balanced and ~ $5K in parts -not including my labor etc) and I finally gave up as it was the most UNRELIABLE POS (unless you consider that it was reliably unreliable :lol: ) I've ever owned. Not the kind of vehicle you want to pack up for the mountains and go on vacation. I really wanted to keep my old bus as it had the great character, but when the fuse box/wiring gave me problems that was the last straw. This bus only had ~86Kmi and needed a new engine (& all the other misc items), my "76 chevy Malibu has 175 Kmi and still no problems. I didn't abuse my westy as I always baby my vehicles so it was really a design flaw --- VW missed the engineering on the old air cooled buses. My old bus is the ONLY vehicle that I actually feel great that I nolonger own it. I actually tried to talk the new owner out of buying it (he wanted to take it on trips down Baja....) oh well it's gotta be a sickness..... One final note, in 2000 I foolishly thought I'd give VW another chance and purchased a '00 Jetta WGN. It had to go to the Dlr ~10 times for various reasons (defective window regulators, A/C, and other minor items). VW has lost me forever.

I have a 2000 VR6 Jetta and I love it to death. My wife had a 2001 Green New Beetle, but when we had our newborn son we had to get a bigger vehicle. We shopped for a Toureg, but it was just out of our price range with our negative equity on our New Beetle as a trade in got it even higher.

So, we saw the Element and loved it. It wasn't your typical Honda which made it even nicer. My wife and I are VW/Audi loyalist and who would of thought of us being traders to Veedub? We hated Honda, but the Element changed us for the better. So now we're still VW loyalist, but like our Element too.

The VW Microbus is kinda cool looking, but was never a consideration. I traded up from a '90 Nissan kingcab pickup for my E.

Oddly enough, however, about 8 months after I bought my E, my wife traded her Dodge Grand Caravan in for a '04 VW Uni Red New Beetle Convertible, which she lovingly named Caliente:

http://www.2dolphins.com/images/caliente/Caliente2.jpg
Dede's Caliente Webpage (http://www.2dolphins.com/caliente.htm)

I am a recent refugee from VW - ran like the dickens to escape the constant problems I encountered in my 98 Jetta GLX. I am so excited to get my 2004 Element (it's in this Saturday). I can't wait to actually get into my car and know it's going to get me where I need to go! I chose Honda because of their known reliability, and I have been a faithful VW/Audi loyalist. I LOVED my Jetta, and will miss it, but I will not miss visiting the "no service" service department of my local VW dealer!! GO ELEMENT!!

I didn't exactly replace a vw with an element, but i did round about sort of way. had a blue 76' super bug in high school. went off to college and didn't need one anymore. after it sat for 3 years i decided i was better driving something else, so i got a used 90' civic. it ran great for a couple of years till i started having timing problems with it. got a new 03' sentra and had it less then a year before i tagged a semi. replaced it with a 03' ex ggm auto. that is how i went from a vw to a element, and it only me 10 short to do it.

pretty much the same boat. I replaced a 98 Audi A6. Probably dropped close to $5k into it over the last year and so many months that when I went back to the dealer the other week and he said it'd be another $1700 for the lower linkage when I just had the upper linkage fixed in August; I said that was it. That's about a third of my remaining payements so it can sit and collect dust because I'm not dropping that much with no guarantee that something else might follow. I'll let the leasing company deal with my allowable "wear and tear" when I turn it in. Outside of gas, oil, brakes and wipers, I'm repair free for 6 years/100k miles.

VW/Audis are great when they're running well, but the minute something goes wrong you better have deep pockets. $1300 for a steering rack that developed a leak. Can't fix it, only replace it. And of course there's two different racks. One's cheaper than the other. Of course I knew which one I had. Never again.

I replaced my 98 Cabrio with the new E last week, since then, I don't have to take any more Zoloft, anti-psychotic drug and attend angry management class no more!

No wonder why VW still said "Driver Wanted" , well guess what, you got the idea

Had a 99 VW Jetta... lease was up in Feb. 03... saw the 'E' on the web and being a mac user... the iPod in the dash had me sold. Was one of the first in my area (Sarasota, Florida) to get one... January '03.

Didn't think I'd ever drive anything but a VW... but they priced me out of their market... and the 'E' fits my personality to the 'T'!