Prius Gen 2 vs ALH TDI Jetta

Hey...

This is my first Gen 2 Prius and it is allocated for my wife's use. My wife hates the highway and grocery shopping is far. I can't think of a better car for her.

A bit prior, I picked up the Jetta ALH TDI with the crappy automatic transmission from a co-worker with only 170k miles for 500 bucks.

I like how the Jetta handles and even with the Auto I absolutely love the fuel economy at 47mpg on the highway. I love the large tank and being able to do 750 miles to a tank. Heck, diesel is cheaper than Regular Fuel here so I am loving that too.

What I don't love is the culture. The auto is not very reliable and it seems like everyone is overly excited about driving a stick shift. It's almost as if they have never driven stick shift before and think it's overly cool. I have driven both auto and stick for along time and I could care less about an economy car like the TDI having stick or auto. Sure it is turbo and you can make it fast but I like driving stick in my cars that are sports or muscle cars not on that car.

I also dislike the difficulty of working on that car and needing a "guru" (what a cliche name) to get anything done. The appeal of driving 50 miles to have someone else (likely uninsured) work on my car seems a bit dorky/fanboi to me.

Then comes the timing belt. Needing hundreds of dollars in tools alone to do the timing belt or once again needing to drive it off somewhere far away. Additionally, I don't think that they could make the timing belt change process any more complicated.

Additionally, this is or is becoming one of those communities where you are limited in what help you can get on a forum. There seems to be little dialogue on handling a given problem and you end up speaking to just one person who can or will help. I had the same issues in the Focus community so I dumped the car.

I have not experienced this issue here at all. Lots of dialogue.

There seems to be lots of comparisons between different generations of Prius and TDI on the interwebs but not these 2 vehicles specifically...probably due to the years when they were produced.

Anyone else get rid of their TDI in favor of the Gen 2 Prius or thinking about it? I am getting awfully close to doing so. I just don't like the longer times between fillups in the TDI and the unapologetic Diesel.

Thanks.

 

Guess it's not a popular transition.

 

Lol awesome!